Trees. Young branches, young leaves, and inflorescences with rust-colored stellate scales or simple hairs. Leaf blade leathery, with palmate veins, margin entire. Plants polygamous or dioecious; staminate flowers in axillary interrupted spikes, or in panicles; pistillate flowers in short, axillary racemes. Sepals 5, free or united at base, imbricate. Petals 5, connate at base into a very short tube, apex free, valvate, in pistillate flowers early deciduous or absent. Stamens 5, inserted at corolla base, alternate with corolla lobes; filaments shorter than anthers; anthers retrorse. Ovary (in staminate flowers reduced or absent) globose to terete; stigma broadly discoid. Drupe terete; exocarp blue-black, thin; endocarp woody, with reticulate ribs.

About five species: tropical Asia; two species (one endemic) in China.