A family of woody plants in all the warmer parts of the world, represented in West Africa by trees, some shrubs and shrubby epiphytes, and a few stranglers.

Members of the family may be recognised by their latex and alternate stipulate leaves. The leaves may be pinnately veined, relatively small, and conduplicate in the bud, when the stipules are also small (but see Ficus carica and Artocarpus heterophyllus) or the stipules may be intrapetiolar, large and hoodlike, leaving circular scars on the stem. The leaves are then rolled (supervolute) in the bud (Ficus etc.) or pleated (plicate) in the bud and later large and digitately divided or compound (Artocarpus communis (now A. altilis), Musanga). The leaves are usually leathery or rough. The flowers are small, ♂ or ♀, apetalous and often four-part, closely packed in cymose inflorescences, the inflorescence axis (the receptacle, cf. Euphorbia) often enlarged. It may be shaped like a spike, a disc or a bag. The fruit is false, sometimes a syncarp or a syconium.

The boundary between the Moraceae and the Urticaceae rests on rather few characters, and Musanga and Myrianthus are now generally considered to be part of the latter family as a consequence of their possession of clear (not milky) sap, which turns black, basal ovules, small achenes and mineral bodies (cystoliths) in the epidermal cells. In conformity with the second edition of the Flora of West tropical Africa, however, the two genera are here retained in the Moraceae.