Cork-wood Family. Dioecious shrubs or small trees, with large entire petioled alternate exstipulate Tor sometimes stipulate?) leaves, and flowers of both sexes in aments formed at the end of the season, which expand before the leaves. Staminate flowers with no perianth; stamens 3-12, inserted on the receptacle; filaments short, distinct; anthers oblong, erect, 2-celled, the sacs longitudinally dehiscent. Pistillate flowers with a solitary 1-celled ovary, subtended by 3 or 4 minute glandular-lacerate bract-lets; style terminal, simple, grooved and flattened, slender, recurved and stigmatic above, caducous; ovule solitary, laterally affixed to the ovary wall, amphitropous. Fruit an oblong drupe with thin exocarp and hard endocarp. Testa thin. Endosperm thin, fleshy. Cotyledons flat, cordate at the base; radicle short, superior.

A family related morphologically to the Myricaceae, but its anatomical characteristics point to affinity with Liquidambar and Platanus. It comprises only the following monotypic genus.