Family: Ebenaceae

Habit: Trees and shrubs. Pubescence often present on stems, leaves, inflorescences, and fruits.

Main axis: Bark often thin, brittle, and defoliating in small plates or strips, gray, brown to blackish, the bark slash exposing yellow wood surrounded by ring of black, interior bark.

Branch: Stems gray to brown, the inner bark black. Stipules absent.

Leaves: Leaves simple, alternate, spiral or distichous around the stem; the lamina entire, the margins often revolute, often with inconspicuous glands on abaxial surface near base or apex.

Inflorescence: Inflorescences axillary or ramiflorous cymes, loosely to densely clustered, or the flowers sometimes solitary.

Flowers: Flowers actinomorphic, usually unisexual, rarely bisexual; the sepals connate toward the base, typically persistent subtending the fruit; the petals connate in a tube or only at base.

Fruit: Fruit a berry, subtended by persistent calyx.

Seeds: Seeds 1-12 per fruit, the endosperm indurate, sometimes ruminate.