Evergreen or deciduous shrubs, lianas, trees, or herbs (and these sometimes lacking chlorophyll), sometimes epiphytic; leaves alternate, decussate, or whorled, sometimes in a basal rosette or distally clustered on shoots, entire to serrate, and often with margins strongly revolute and leaves needle-like (i.e., ericoid); stipules lacking; leaf epidermal cells lignified or not, and hypodermal cells often present; stomata usually anomocytic or paracytic; vascular bundles frequently associated with a fiber-sheath; nodes usually unilacunar; buds protected by 2 to numerous scales or naked. Indumentum a mixture of unicellular and multicellular hairs, or sometimes only unicellular-pubescent, the multicellular hairs extremely various, glandular or non-glandular, unbranched and short to elongate, variously branched, or peltate. Inflorescences terminal or axillary, usually indeterminate and often racemose, with variously developed bracts and usually a pair of bracteoles, these sometimes recaulescent, replacing calyx lobes; flowers pendulous to erectly held, articulated with pedicel or not. Flowers showy to inconspicuous, perfect to imperfect, usually 4- or 5-merous, actinomorphic to zygomorphic. Sepals (1-) 4-5 (-9), usually connate, persistent or deciduous, occasionally colorful and fleshy; petals (3-) 4-5 (-9), usually connate and typically campanulate, cylindrical, or urceolate, occasionally rotate, deciduous or persistent. Stamens (2-) 5-10 (-16), free from the corolla or adnate, sometimes connate, included or exserted, the filaments straight to variously curved, unicellular-pubescent or glabrous; anthers tetrasporangiate or bisporangiate, inverting (late, or more commonly early) in development, with 2 or 4 apparently terminal or dorsal appendages (awns, spurs) or these sometimes on the filaments, opening by pores or short to long slits, sometimes through narrowed tubules, an endothecium usually lacking. Pollen usually tricolpate to tricolporate, in tetrahedral tetrads, but these sometimes reduced, or occasionally in monads, sometimes associated with viscin threads. Nectary present or absent. Ovary (2-) 4-5 (-14) carpellate, superior to inferior, with usually axile to intruded parietal placentation, rarely apical or basal; ovules 1-many per carpel, anatropous to nearly campylotropous, unitegmic, tenuinucellate, the embryo sac usually of the Polygonum type; style short to long, hollow, sometimes expanded apically; stigma truncate to capitate or slightly to strongly lobed, sometimes cup-shaped, funnel-shaped, or flabellate to pinnatifid. Fruits loculicidal to septicidal capsules, berries, drupes (with one or several pits), or occasionally dry and indehiscent; seeds small, seeds without vascular bundle in raphe, testa usually single-layered, with cells isodiametric to strongly elongated, sometimes winged or tailed, sometimes mucilaginous on wetting. Embryo fusiform or spatulate, white or less commonly green, with 2 cotyledons, to extremely reduced and undifferentiated; endosperm cellular, well developed, with haustoria at both ends; germination epigeal.