Trees or shrubs, usually deciduous. Young parts usually covered with stellate trichomes. Branchlets with obvious leaf scars and lenticels. Leaves in spirals, 2- or 3-pinnate; leaflets with petiolules; leaflet blades with margin usually dentate or sometimes entire. Thyrses axillary, much-branched, consisting of several dichasia.

Flowers bisexual. Calyx 5 or 6-parted, imbricate. Petals 5 or 6, white or purple, distinct, linear-spatulate, expanding. Staminal tube cylindric, with 10-12 ribs, mouth expanding, margin 10-12 lobed; anthers 10-12, inserted between filament tube lobes, included or partly exserted. Disk annular. Ovary subglobose, 3-6 locular, with 2 superposed ovules per locule; stigma capitate, 3-6 lobed. Fruit a drupe, subfleshy; stone bony. Seeds pendulous; exotesta hard chitinous; endosperm fleshy, thin, or absent; cotyledons leaflike, thin; radicle cylindric.