Description from Flora of China
Trees or shrubs. Branchlets unarmed, often caducous, produced successively from basal pulvinus. Leaves alternate; leaf blade pinnately veined. Inflorescences racemelike or spikelike; peduncle base sometimes with persistent bud scales; rachis usually slightly zigzagged. Flowers sometimes ± opposite, fragrant, often heterostylous. Bract and bracteoles or bract at calyx base forming epicalyx, persistent. Calyx adherent to ovary, truncate or 4- or 5(or 6)-denticulate, accrescent. Corolla tubular, campanulate, or urceolate; lobes 4-6, with a tuft of hairs behind each filament. Stamens 4 or 5(or 6), epipetalous, opposite petal lobes; filaments short; anther 2-loculed. Disk annular, fleshy. Ovary semisuperior, basally 3-loculed, apically 1-loculed; placenta central, free; ovules 3. Style slender, shorter than or as long as corolla tube; stigma 3-lobed. Drupe united with calyx and apparently inferior, tipped with disk and calyx teeth, often ± longitudinally striate when dried, 1-seeded; endosperm copious.
The stems are often clearly dimorphic. The older, pale-barked, perennial stems have groups of prominent scars left by the caducous branchlets, which bear the flowers and fruit; these are much more slender and often purplish with white lenticels. The caducous shoots have bud scales at the base, but these are lost soon after the branchlets develop.
Recent molecular data suggest that Schoepfia is not very closely related to other members of the Olacaceae.
Species 2–4 are very closely related to each other and are difficult to differentiate in the absence of flowers.
About 30 species: tropical and subtropical America and Asia; four species (one endemic) in China.