Trees, large, monoecious, usually with buttress roots, with red exudate when cut. Leaves paripinnate, alternate, sessile; leaflets usually in many pairs, first pair (near base) small, like stipules, others evidently larger, usually serrate; lateral veins often many, extending to tips of dentate margins, parallel. Thyrses terminal or axillary. Flowers unisexual, actinomorphic. Calyx cupular; sepals half connate, valvate. Petals 5, usually broadly obovate or subtriangular, without scales or with 1 gland adaxially. Disk annular, 5-lobed. Stamens (male flowers) 5, long exserted; filaments glabrous or hairy at base; anthers small. Ovary (female flowers) obcordiform, 2-lobed, 2-loculed, lobes subglobose, glabrous or tomentose; ovules 1 per locule; style filiform, very long, apex twisted. Fruit deeply parted into 2 schizocarps, usually only 1 developed, ellipsoid; pericarp thick, spongy in middle, smooth adaxially. Seeds same shape as schizocarps; testa leathery, seeds fully covered by an aril and adnate to testa; embryo curved.

See the treatments by Jacobs (Reinwardtia 6: 109. 1962, and in Adema et al., Fl. Males., ser. 1, 11(3): 698-704. 1994).

One species: tropical Asia, Pacific islands.