Shrubs, subshrubs, or trees. Leaves small, mostly scale-like, alternate, estipulate, usually sessile, mostly with salt-secreting glands. Flowers usually in racemes or panicles, rarely solitary, usually hermaphroditic, regular. Calyx 4- or 5-fid, persistent. Petals 4 or 5, free, deciduous after anthesis or sometimes persistent. Disk inferior, usually thick, nectarylike. Stamens 4, 5, or more numerous, usually free, inserted on disk, rarely united into fascicle at base, or united up to half length into a tube. Anthers 2-thecate, longitudinally dehiscent. Pistil 1, consisting of 2-5 carpels; ovary superior, 1-loculed; placentation parietal, rarely septate, or basal; ovules numerous, rarely few; styles short, usually 2-5, free, sometimes united. Capsule conic, abaxially dehiscent. Seeds numerous, hairy throughout or awned at apex; awns puberulous from base or from middle; endosperm present or absent; embryo orthotropous.

Myrtama has been placed alternatively in Myricaria, Tamarix, or treated as a separate genus (see Gaskin et al., Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 91: 402-410. 2004; Zhang et al., Acta Bot. Boreal.-Occid. Sin. 20: 421-431. 2000).

Zhang Pengyun & Zhang Yaojia. 1990. Tamaricaceae. In: Li Hsiwen, ed., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 50(2): 142-177.

Three genera and ca. 110 species: steppe and desert regions of the Old World; three genera and 32 species (12 endemic) in China.

(Authors: Yang Qiner (杨亲二); John Gaskin)