Description from Flora of China
Trees or shrubs. Buds usually pubescent. Leaves alternate or clustered at twig apices, simple, petiolate, margin entire or serrate, pinnately veined; stipules caducous. Flowers solitary or in racemes, axillary, long stalked, usually bisexual. Sepals 4 or 5, valvate or imbricate, ovate, slightly connate at base. Petals 4 or 5, rarely absent, obovate, imbricate, margin entire or dentate at apices. Stamens numerous, inserted on disk; filaments short; anthers opening by vertical slit, connective usually elongated as beak. Disk broad, thick. Ovary 3-7-loculed; ovules several per locule, furrowed, pubescent; style free or connate, subulate. Capsule globose or ovoid, prickly, septicidally dehiscent into 3-7 valves; exocarp woody, thick; endocarp thin, leathery, usually detached from exocarp when dry. Seeds 1 to several, pendulous, usually arillate in lower 1/2; endosperm fleshy, copious. Cotyledons flat.
Echinocarpus cavaleriei H. Léveillé (Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 10: 474. 1912), E. erythrocarpus H. Léveillé (loc. cit., "erythrocarpa"), E. esquirolii H. Léveillé (loc. cit.), and E. hederirhizus H. Léveillé (loc. cit., "hederaerhiza") are synonyms of, respectively, Euonymus acanthoxanthus Pitard, E. acanthocarpus Franchet, E. acanthoxanthus, and E. aculeatus Hemsley, all in the Celastraceae (see Fl. China 11).
About 120 species: primarily in the tropics and subtropics; 14 species (seven endemic) in China.