Habit

Trees or shrubs. 

Leaves

Leaves pinnately compound, alternate, leaflets 5-21, coriaceous, upper surface glabrous, lower surface glabrous to scurfy stellate pubescent, margins entire, petiole base clasping, stipules absent or rudimentary. 

Flowers

Flowers perfect, actinomorphic, in terminal (often appearing lateral), compound-umbellate or racemose-umbellate inflorescences, the ultimate units umbellules or racemules, pedicels not jointed; calyx an undulate rim, often with 5-9 minute teeth; petals 5-9, valvate, caducous; stamens as many as and alternate with the petals, or 2-8 times as many in 1-2 whorls; ovary inferior or appearing half inferior to fully superior by expansion of the disk and reduced development of the hypanthium, 2-12(-16)-carpellate; styles as many as carpels, distinct or connate to form a stylopodium. 

Fruit

Fruit a drupe, globose or globose-urceolate to ovoid or cylindrical, rounded to angular or compressed in cross section, pyrenes ovoid to laterally compressed, as many as carpels.