Description from Flora of China
Trees or shrubs, evergreen or deciduous, monoecious or dioecious, aromatic, often with resinous, peltate glands. Leaves alternate, simple, pinnately veined, entire to irregularly serrate or lobed, rarely pinnatifid; stipules absent or rarely present. Flowers in spikes, usually unisexual, anemophilous, without perianth. Male flowers solitary in axil of each bract, with 2-4 bracteoles or not. Stamens 2-20, often 4-8 on receptacle at base of bract; filaments short, free or slightly united at base; anthers erect, dithecal, extrorse, dehiscing longitudinally. Female flowers solitary or 2-4 in axil of bract, usually with 2-4 bracteoles. Gynoecium of 2 carpels united into a compound and 1-loculed ovary; styles distinct or united only at base; ovule solitary, basal, erect, orthotropous. Fruit drupaceous, or nearly a nutlet, often with headlike, wax-covered papillae; endocarp hard. Seeds nearly without endosperm; embryo straight; cotyledons fleshy, plano-convex.
Three genera and ca. 50 species: widespread in both hemispheres, mostly in temperate or subtropical regions; one genus and four species (two endemic) in China.
Kuang Ko-zen & Lu An-ming. 1979. Myricaceae. In: Kuang Ko-zen & Li Pei-chun, eds., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 21: 1-6.
(Authors: Lu Anmin (路安民 Lu An-ming) ; Allan J. Bornstein)