Shrub or slender tree 3-12 m tall; trunk to 30 cm in diameter, straight; wood light-colored, thin and the pith ample; outer bark gray, rough; inner bark thick, clear-chestnut or dark-red; branches and branchlets acutely tetragonal, deeply canaliculate along the sides, decussately flattened and ampliate at the nodes, densely incanous-pubescent or sericeous. Leaves slightly aromatic, opposite or rarely approximate, membranous or chartaceous, oblong to elliptic or obovate, 7.5-35 cm long and 3.5-15 cm wide, acuminate, entire or denticulate, basally long-attenuate and decurrent into the petiole, shiny-green above, paler beneath, appressed hirtellous with incanous hairs above, glabrescent but slightly roughened in age, beneath appressed sericeous-puberulent with incanous hairs, especially along the midrib and larger veins and dotted with cutaneous glands, petioles 4-13 mm long, incanous-pubescent; minor veins slender and delicate. Inflores-cences axillary, solitary, opposite, cymes to half as long as the subtending leaves, di-or trichotomous, globose or capitate-corymbose when young, densely many-flowered but becoming somewhat more loosely flowered, bracteolate; flowers manifestly declinous; peduncles slender, 2-5 cm long, shorter in the pistillate flowers than in the staminate, flowers often flattened and distinctly canaliculate, densely strigose-sericeous and incanous; pedicels filiform, to 5 mm long in the staminate flowers, short or obsolete in the pistillate, incanous-pubescent; bractlets and prophylls usually absent, or when present, few, linear, subulate, firm, short and incanous. Flowers copious, calyx clavate-infundibular, subturbinate-tubular, in the pistillate more usually tubular-campanulate, subangular, firmly membra-nous or subherbaceous, 5-8 mm long, 3 mm wide, densely incano-sericeous outside, softly sericeous within, lax around the corolla-tube, acutely 4-dentate, 4-lobed, or 4-parted, the segments ovate, acute, often spreading; corolla infundib-ular, white or yellowish, the tube cylindrical, slender, 4-12 mm long, puberulent upwards, the lobes 4, ovate-or lanceolate-lingulate, acute, 2-4 mm long, ca. 2 mm wide, spreading, often reflexed, stamens 4, inserted ca. 1 mm below the mouth of the corolla-tube, exserted in the staminate flowers or equaling the corolla-tube in the pistillate, the filaments 0.2-7 mm long, glabrous; pistil included in the staminate flowers or exserted in the pistillate, the style 3.7-7 mm long, glabrous, the stigma branches 2.4-3.4 mm long, longer in the pistillate, flowers papillose, ovary subglobose, ca. 1 mm long and wide, flat at both ends, glabrous, apically 4-lobed, 4-celled. Fruit borne in heavy clusters, subglobose or obovate, ca. 8 mm long and 7 mm wide, apically depressed, smooth and shiny, green or yellow, becoming orange, 2-4 seeded, the base invested by the fruiting-calyx; seeds ovate, plano-convex, with a suberustaceous testa; fruiting-calyx greatly enlarged and indurated, cupuliform, shallowly and irregularly lobed, enclosing the base of the fruit.
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