Diagnosis (sensu van Soest 2002):
Pedunculate sponges, with spherical, ovoid or cylindrical body carried on a simple or ramified stalk, normally attached to the substrate by a root system; usually an apical oscule. Body with a moreorless radial skeleton and with brushes of spicules at the surface, skeleton of the stalk a tightly packed mass of aligned megascleres, bound by spongin. Megascleres are tylostyles of different sizes with raphides in trichodragmas.
Type species: Rhizaxinella clavigera Keller, 1880 (by monotypy) = junior synonym of Alcyonium pyrifera delle Chiaje, 1828.