Glabrous perennials, becoming woody in the older parts; vegetative stems with elongated internodes, decumbent or growing through shrubs; individual plants either female or with male and hermaphrodite flowers together. Leaves all cauline, simple or once-pinnate; leaflets sub-fleshy or subcoriaceous, serrate or crenate, with or without midribs, with or without stipellae, with a glaucous bloom beneath or not glaucous, stomata restricted to the under surface, sheath open at the top and produced into a pair of membranous lobes, petioles with broad adaxial grooves. Inflorescences terminal with a terminal and no or several lateral compound umbels subtended by reduced leaves; bracts simple, narrow-linear; flowers white; sepals smaller than petals, but not obsolete; petals with inflexed tips and a single median oil tube, petals of female flowers smaller than those of the male and hermaphrodite; female flowers with minute rudimentary staminodes; styles slender; mericarps with five acute ribs, the laterals enlarged into wings; oil tubes single in the intervals and ribs, paired on the commissure, those in the intervals and on the commissure large and flattened, those in the ribs minute; endocarps not lignified.

Hcrbae lignescentes, perennes, glabrae, gynodioeciae. Caules internodiis elongatis, decumbentes vel scandentes. Folia unifoliolata vel unipinnata; vaginis bilobatis ad apicem. Inflorescentiae terminales. Umbellae compositae. Flores feminei staminodiis rudimentalibus. Cristae laterales mericarpii alatae. Species typica: S. geniculata.