Trees or shrubs (or woody vines with tendrils in Cardiospermum and allied genera), rarely herbaceous climbers. Indumentum usually of simple hairs, often glandular on young parts, buds, and inflorescences. Leaves alternate, usually estipulate; leaf blade pinnate or digitate, rarely simple; leaflets alternate to opposite, entire or dentate to serrate. Inflorescence a terminal or axillary thyrse; bracts and bracteoles small. Flowers unisexual, rarely polygamous or bisexual, actinomorphic or zygomorphic, usually small. Sepals 4 or 5(or 6), equal or unequal, free or connate at base, imbricate or valvate. Petals 4 or 5(or 6), sometimes absent, free, imbricate, usually clawed, often with scales or hair-tufted basal appendages. Disk conspicuous, fleshy, complete or interrupted, lobed or annular, rarely absent. Stamens 5-10(-74), usually 8, rarely numerous, variously inserted but usually within disk, often exserted in male flowers; filaments free, rarely connate; anthers dorsifixed, longitudinally dehiscent, introrse; staminodes sometimes present in carpellate flowers, but filaments shorter and anthers with a thick wall, indehiscent. Ovary superior, (1-)3(or 4)-loculed; ovules 1 or 2(or several) per locule, placentation axile, rarely parietal, anatropous, campylotropous, or amphitropous; style usually apical (terminal), semigynobasic in Allophylus [gynobasic in Deinbollia Schumacher & Thonning]; stigma entire or 2 or 3(or 4)-lobed, usually rudimentary in male flowers. Fruit a loculicidal capsule, berry, or drupe, or consisting of 2 or 3 samaras, often 1-seeded and 1-loculed by abortion. Seeds 1(or 2 or more) per locule; testa black or brown, hard, often with a conspicuous fleshy aril or sarcotesta; embryo curved, plicate, or twisted, oily and starchy; endosperm usually absent. 2n = 20-36.

Source: [
• 4
]. 

Petals 1–5, sometimes absent, imbricate

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Sepals imbricate or rarely valvate

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Flowers actinomorphic or zygomorphic, sometimes very small, mostly unisexual, variously arranged

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Leaves alternate or rarely opposite, simple, or 1-or 3-foliolate, or pinnate or bipinnate; stipules rarely present

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Seeds without endosperm, often conspicuously arillate; embryo with usually plicate or twisted cotyledons

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Fruit capsular or indehiscent, rarely winged

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Ovary superior, entire or vertically lobed to the base, 1–8-celled; style terminal or gynobasic; ovules 1–2, rarely many in each cell, axile

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Stamens hypogynous, often 8, inserted within the disk or unilateral; filaments free, often hairy; anthers 2-celled

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Disk usually present, sometimes unilateral

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Trees, shrubs or climbers

Source: [
• 1
]. 

Stamens usually 5–12 (occasionally more numerous), free or ± connate at the base, reduced or rarely absent in 9 flowers

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Ovary of 2–8 carpels completely connate or only at the base, loculi 1–2-ovulate, ovules anatropous; style 1; pistillode usually present in female flowers

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Petals 0–5, usually with 1–2 scales at the base of the lamina

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Disk usually extra-staminal, sometimes unilateral (absent in Dodonaea)

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Sepals usually 4–5, often ± connate

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Seeds without endosperm, often with an arillode

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Fruit capsular or fleshy and indehiscent (berry or drupe) or composed of 1 or more indehiscent cocci (often reduced to 1 by abortion)

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Flowers usually spuriously polygamo-dioecious, more rarely monoecious

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Inflorescences usually racemoid or paniculate terminal or axillary or caulinary thyrses, or flowers sometimes fasciculate

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Trees, shrubs or climbers (rarely herbaceous)

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Stipules absent (except in Paullinia and Cardiospermum in our area)

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Leaves alternate (rarely opposite, not in our area), simple, 1-foliolate, 3-foliolate, biternate, decompound, paripinnate, imparipinnate or bipinnate

Source: [
• 2
]. 

Leaves alternate, sometimes crowded (palm-like) at the apex of the tree, variously simple, ternate, biternate, pinnate or bipinnate, in the latter two kinds most often without a terminal leaflet at maturity; stipules lacking or small

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Indumentum commonly of simple hairs, sometimes in tufts in the axils of leaf-veins, rarely fasciculate; glands of several kinds occurring on both vegetative and flowering parts

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Trees, shrubs or rarely herbs, sometimes climbing by tendrils

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Calyx of (3–)4–5(–7) free or partially united imbricate or valvate sepals

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Petals absent or 4–5, often with a basal claw, usually with a simple or elaborated scale on the inner face

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Inflorescences axillary or cauliflorous, thyrsoidal, paniculate or racemose

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Flowers regular or slightly zygomorphic, unisexual except in some Dodonaea but with non-functional organs of the other sex usually present

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Stamens 5–20(–74), often 8, but sometimes variable in number within a species, inserted in most cases inside the disk or occasionally on its surface; filaments free, terete or barely flattened, glabrous or hairy; anthers variously ovoid-sagittate to spherical, sometimes pilose, the connective rarely glandular, dehiscing introrsely by longitudinal slits; pollen grains tricolporate

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Disk conspicuous, simple, or rarely a double ring, or reduced to a pair of glands

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Fruit a capsule, sometimes lobed, or drupe, often composed of one matured mericarp with the aborted remaining carpels visible at its base

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Ovary 1–8-locular; ovules usually 1–2 (rarely several) per locule; style apical, except in >i>Allophylus where semi-gynobasic, entire or 2–3-lobed

Source: [
• 3
]. 

Seed usually with a hard black or brown testa, which in one case contains stomata, often with a conspicuous fleshy aril or sarcotesta, without endosperm

Source: [
• 3
].