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Perennial shrub up to 5 m. tall; stems when young somewhat angular to subterete, densely covered with a short velutinous to somewhat harsh stellate indumentum, usually of a greyish-olive colour and as a rule with long whitish spreading hairs (very rarely absent) at least on the very young parts, when older terete, glabrescent, woody and ultimately with a grey cortex, faintly fissured by rather short longitudinal markings.
A shrub. It keeps growing from year to year. It grows 2-5 m tall. The stems have dense grey hairs. The leaves are simple and almost round. They are 20 cm long by 18 cm wide. There is a slight tip at the top. The base is heart shaped and there can be teeth around the edge. The flowers are 2.5 cm across and in large pyramid shaped heads at the top. The are pale blue to white.
Flowers pale mauve, lavender or lilac with deep-red-purple centre and radiating purple veins, numerous, axillary, on main branches and also on short axillary shoots, aggregated in terminal and lateral, ultimately leafless, often large pseudo-panicles; pedicels usually under 3 cm. long, velutinous, with or without pilose hairs, articulated in upper 6 mm.
Calyx 4–6 mm. long, cupuliform, tomentose and sometimes also pilose; lobes 4–7 mm. long, triangular or ovate-triangular, acute or mucronate, tomentose-velutinous, with inconspicuous median veins.
Mericarps 12–25, c. 10 × 5–6 mm., semi-orbicular-reniform, rounded and muticous, papery and brittle when mature, 1-seeded.
Fruit c. 10 × 15 mm., subglobose to depressed-globose, umbilicate, densely stellate-hairy.
Staminal tube deep red-purple and glabrous in conical portion, stellate-hairy at the apex.
Petals c. 12 mm. long, obovate-obcuneate.
Seeds c. 3 × 2 mm.
