Tall trees, evergreen, leafless with straight stems and drooping branches; branchlets very slender with jointed, grooved internodes, rush-like with whorls of 6-8 scales, resembles the twigs of equisetum; leaves scale like in 6-8 whorls, connate by their margins; male and female flowers on separate plants; male flowers monandrous, males in terminal, cylindric spikes, numerous formed of short, superposed toothed cups; females arranged in small, ovoid or globose heads; bracteate and bracteolate; sepals 1 or 2, concave; stamens-1, inflexed in bud, anther large; female flowers: ovary minute, 1-celled, ovules-2, styles-2-fid, arms filiform, stigmatose to the base; fruits with about 12 rows of puberulous achenes globose or oblong with hardened bracts ovate-oblong; nutlets thin and winged.