Lianas woody, without tendrils and latex. Leaves alternate, petiolate, scabrid or sparsely hairy, entire or serrate. Plants dioecious. Flowers small, apetalous. Staminate flowers in slender spikes, with bractlets; calyx 4-cleft, rarely 3- or 5-cleft; lobes valvate; stamens 4, alternate with calyx lobes; anthers introrse; gynoecium reduced. Pistillate flowers in dense spikes, without bractlets; calyx as in male flowers, persistent, recurved; rudimentary stamens very short; ovary with stigma capitate, sessile. Drupe slightly compressed; endocarp thin, fragile crustaceous, outside wrinkled, inside with warty or spinose protuberances penetrating endosperm. Seeds with fleshy endosperm; cotyledons large, leaflike.

About ten species: tropical Africa and Asia; one species in China.