Trees or shrubs, sometimes climbing, evergreen or deciduous. Vegetative buds enclosed by hooded stipules. Stipules 2, connate and adnate to or free from petiole, splitting and caducous leaving an annular scar on twig or petiole. Leaves simple, usually alternate, petiolate, leaf blade pinnately veined, margin entire. Flowers usually solitary, terminal or axillary, showy and large. Spathaceous bracts 1-many, basal to tepals. Tepals 6-9(-45), in 2 to many whorls, 3(-6) per whorl, usually petaloid and fleshy, sometimes outer ones nearly leathery or reduced and sepal-like. Carpels and stamens many, free, spirally arranged on elongated torus. Stamens usually at basal part of torus; filaments thick and short, sometimes elongated; anthers linear, bithecous, dehiscence longitudinal; connective usually exerted forming a long or short tip. Gynoecium with or without a gynophore, carpels present at upper part of torus, ovules 2-14 per carpel, in 2 series on ventral suture, anatropous, placentation marginal; styles usually short. Fruit usually apocarpous, consisting of a group of follicles, winged nuts or berries; fruit rarely syncarpous. Seeds 1-12 per fruiting carpel, suspended by an elastic silky funiculus, albuminous.

6 genera and about 250 species

Michelia x alba