Trees or shrubs, often exuding a resinous and usually acrid juice. Leaves alternate, simple or compound, exstipulate. Flowers regular, small, hermaphrodite, unisexual or polygamous. Calyx 3–5-partite, imbricate. Petals 3–7, rarely wanting, free, perigynous, imbricate. Disc usually annular or cup-shaped, entire or lobed. Stamens as many or twice as many as the petals, inserted under or upon the disc; filaments usually free; anthers 2-celled. Ovary superior, usually 1-celled, sometimes 2–5-celled, very rarely of 2–5 free carpels; styles 1–3; ovules solitary in the cells, either pendulous from the top or wall or from a basal funicle. Fruit superior or very rarely half-interior, usually a 1–5-celled 1–5-seeded drupe. Seed exalbuminous; embryo straight or curved, cotyledons usually fleshy, radicle short.

A large order of nearly 50 genera and about 450 species, chiefly tropical in its distribution, rare in temperate regions. It includes several edible species, as the mango (probably the best of the tropical fruits), the hog-plum (Spondias), the Pistachia nut, &c. Some species of Rhus and other genera secrete a more or less poisonous and acrid juice; others produce valuable varnishes. The single New Zealand genus is endemic.