Dioecious, evergreen, low-growing microphyllous shrubs of irregularly branched and straggling, drooping or pendulous habit with age, with numerous densely branched minor branchlet systems. The branches are oriented in multiple directions to give the foliar tufts a more mop-like rather than spear-like appearance, with each branchlet of similar overall structure. The scale-like leaves are set spirally but overall appear collectively as forming usually 4–5 rows, but never opposite or decussate.

Mainly dioecious, slow-growing, small-sized resinous evergreen trees (to c.25 m) or (usually) low spreading or round-headed shrubs of 1.5–9.0 m high, of irregularly rounded or broad-crowned outline.

Evergreen shrubs to forest trees, to 10–55 m and 1.5 m dbh, with branchlets strongly whorled in origins. Leaves are slender, spreading all around shoots, crowded, densely spirally set on shoots which are spreading to descending or upsweeping or erect towards the tips of the shoots.

Tall to very tall, medium-sized to sometimes massive, monoecious evergreen trees typically well furnished with foliage throughout much of life on thick, stout shoots, with strongly whorled branches and a typically bushy but conical and broadly tapering fairly symmetric crown. Its large, broad, tapering dorsiventrally flattened leaves densely furnish all shoots and are swept into two somewhat irregularly spreading ranks across all laterals, which is its most conspicuous feature.

Moderate-sized evergreen trees, of graceful appearance and monopodial habit throughout life, with initially strongly whorled but widely spaced horizontally spreading branch systems and eventual broadly domed crown of open habit, bearing numerous and persistent flattened spine-tipped leaves.

Generally small to medium-sized, dioecious, slender evergreen trees, of stately and strongly monopodial form, the crown acutely tapering pointed–columnar. The tree is well furnished with short, straight, spreading-ascending somewhat monopodial branches and foliar branchlets usually throughout life, the crowns borne from long, slender, shaft-like, strongly erect trunks.

Monoecious evergreen trees of podocarp-like foliar habit. The leaves are more freely spaced, more perpendicularly inserted and more irregularly spreading than in Pectinopitys, often spreading and semi-drooping all around most major shoots and hence scarcely ranked. The leaves are large in contrast to both Prumnopitys and Pectinopitys. The long, narrow leaves, often with somewhat descending tips, are a particularly distinctive feature of Sundacarpus.

Deciduous coniferous trees of very variable size, c.10–45 m or more in height, typically with straight trunks and narrow conical or billowing, rather sparse and open crowns, in exposed situations. At least the uppermost branch systems plus often the upper tree-crown typically adopt a conspicuously asymmetric and usually downwind-trained crown habit.

Moderate to large-sized, slow-growing trees, with cord-like decussate uniformly scale-leaf form, borne on slender branches and especially numerous branchlets, forming slender pale bright apple-green cord-like shoots adopting a tassel-like and generally cascading form of overall foliar growth.

Small to moderately tall monoecious evergreen trees, with clasping to awl-shaped forward-pointing evergreen leaves set relatively thickly on stout spreading or ascending shoots which are borne, in earlier life, from approximately whorled branches which are typically well furnished on a symmetric tapering crown in earlier life. In later life the tree habit becomes much more irregular, often gnarled and gaunt with only distal foliar clumps.

Tall, long-lived evergreen forest trees with rough-barked, often vertically creviced trunks, to 25 m or less, eventually mostly bearing a broadly irregular to pyramidal or rounded crown, giving mature trees a particularly stately and often majestic billowing open-crowned habit with age. Foliage is dominated by conspicuous, long, needle-like leaves borne in basally united (fasciculate) groups from shoots with a strongly seasonal annual growth rhythm. Seeds are protected within a (usually) robust, woody cone.

Evergreen small to moderately large trees, at least one of dwarf semi-aquatic habit. Their branch systems are of moderate length and spreading, with superficially symmetric slender minor branchlets forming somewhat flattened or downcurving open foliage sprays. Their leaves are ranked but curiously inversely rotated along one side of each shoot.

Medium-sized, evergreen tree, often of somewhat crooked habit and with interiorly thin but externally densely furnished open crowns of fine, somewhat flattened, much-branched, scale-like foliage.

Small evergreen plants of semi-woody creeping habit with scattered upright stems. The stems are sparsely and weakly branched, green and bear only small leaves throughout.

Slow-growing trees or shrubs, displaying a considerable range of spreading to scale-like foliage on one plant. The juvenile gradually transitions to adult foliage via leaves of intermediate condition, which are bright mid-green and glossy on all exposed surfaces.