Plants shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate or clustered, simple or digitately compound with (1-)3 leaflets; stipules small, sometimes persistent. Inflorescences of 1-few flowers clustered in upper leaf axils or terminal or lateral, often corymbose, racemes or panicles. Flowers radially symmetric; receptacles shortly campanulate to narrowly cylindrical, rarely shallow and disc-shaped; sepals 3 or 4; petals absent or (3-)4, subequal and soon falling; stamens 6-numerous, free, borne on an androgrynophore; ovaries globose to narrowly cylindrical, with 4-many ovules, borne on a long gynophore. Fruits globose, ellipsoid, or cylindrical, glabrous or hairy, sometimes torulose.
Maerua is a genus of about 80 species. They grow in drier areas of the Old World, primarily in Africa.