Stems with milky juice. Leaves undivided, usually alternate and untoothed. Flowers in usually broadening umbel-like lusters, yellowish-green; no petals or sepals, but a solitary 3-styled female flower, surrounded by several 1-anthered male flowers cupped by a calyx0like bract, with 4-5 glands on its lip and -3 small leaflike bracts at its base. Fruit rounded, stalked.