Shrubs or trees up to 10 (-15) m high. Hairs whitish or yellowish, unicellular, simple or dibrachiate, up to ca. 1.5 mm long. Leaves persistent, coriaceous, the venation brochidodromous, with several pairs of nearly straight lateral veins that are united by a marginal vein that parallels the leaf margin. Inflorescence a solitary axillary flower or a short axillary bracteate shoot with 1–4 decussate pairs of flowers. Flowers pentamerous (sometimes tetramerous in one population of C. cochleatus ); calyx-lobes often flared, often with an apical appendage, the calyx fused beyond the ovary’s summit and then usually tearing between the lobes at anthesis to the staminal ring or petal scar, or the calyx-lobes free with little or no fusion beyond the ovary’s summit and not tearing between the lobes; petals slightly fleshy, white or tinged with red, often drying brown; bracteoles usually small, almost triangular, often caducous at about anthesis or in C. legrandii leafy and persistent; stamens 35 to ca. 500, folded centerward or more or less erect in the bud; anthers somewhat to markedly elongate, with about 4–40 glands (0–1 in C. legrandii ); ovary 2–6-locular, the locular wall sometimes glandular; ovules per locule 8–75 (–ca. 100 in C. moritzianus ), the placenta a U-shaped pad or mound of tissue or an essentially round peltate structure. Fruit subglobose; seeds few to numerous, about reniform, the seed coat hard,  lustrous, the external wall 1–4 cells thick, the surface cells rounded to elongate, the central portion of the seed sometimes soft; embryo oily, whitish, C-shaped, the cotyledons.reflexed or straight, less than 1/4 the length of the embryo.