Trees or shrubs with milky sap, alternate petioled stipulate leaves, the stipules fugacious, and small monoecious or dioecious axillary clustered flowers, or the pistillate flowers solitary in some exotic genera. Calyx mostly 4-5-parted, becoming fleshy in fruit, inferior. Petals none. Staminate flowers, spicate or capitate, the stamens as many as the calyx-segments. Filaments inflexed in the bud. Pistillate flowers capitate or spicate. Ovary superior, 1-celled in our genera. Ovule solitary, pendulous, anatropous. Styles 1 or 2. Fruit mostly aggregate. Embryo curved or spiral.

About 55 genera and 1,000 species, natives of temperate and tropical regions. The largest genus is Ficus, the Fig, of which there are over 600 known species.