Plants shrubs or trees, usually spiny (at least when young), usually dioecious. Leaves alternate, simple, usually petiolate; blade margins usually serrate with glandular teeth, rarely entire. Inflorescences short axillary clusters. Flowers unisexual; sepals 4 or 5, free or connate only at the base; petals absent; glandular disk present outside the stamens or staminodes, composed of several small, closely set, adnate or connate glands or, in pistillate flowers, annular; staminate flowers: stamens 10-many, exserted, filaments free, filiform; anthers basifixed, sometimes apiculate by extension of the connective; pistillate flowers: ovary 1, superior, 1-celled, with 2(-6) placentas, each with 2-many ovules; styles 2, 3, (4), united at the base or throughout or styles absent; stigmatic region semilunate to U-shaped. Fruits berries, up to 1 cm long, calyx and glandular disk often persistent at the base and styles and/or anthers at the tip; pericarp thinly leathery. blackish when dry.
Xylosma includes about 100 species. It grows in tropical and subtropical regions in all reas of the world except Africa.
According to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, Xylosma is to be treated as feminine.