Trees or shrubs, evergreen or deciduous, monoecious or dioecious, aromatic, often with resinous, peltate glands. Leaves alternate, simple, pinnately veined, entire to irregularly serrate or lobed, rarely pinnatifid; stipules absent or rarely present. Flowers in spikes, usually unisexual, anemophilous, without perianth. Male flowers solitary in axil of each bract, with 2-4 bracteoles or not. Stamens 2-20, often 4-8 on receptacle at base of bract; filaments short, free or slightly united at base; anthers erect, dithecal, extrorse, dehiscing longitudinally. Female flowers solitary or 2-4 in axil of bract, usually with 2-4 bracteoles. Gynoecium of 2 carpels united into a compound and 1-loculed ovary; styles distinct or united only at base; ovule solitary, basal, erect, orthotropous. Fruit drupaceous, or nearly a nutlet, often with headlike, wax-covered papillae; endocarp hard. Seeds nearly without endosperm; embryo straight; cotyledons fleshy, plano-convex.

Three genera and ca. 50 species: widespread in both hemispheres, mostly in temperate or subtropical regions; one genus and four species (two endemic) in China.

Kuang Ko-zen & Lu An-ming. 1979. Myricaceae. In: Kuang Ko-zen & Li Pei-chun, eds., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 21: 1-6.

(Authors: Lu Anmin (路安民 Lu An-ming) ; Allan J. Bornstein)