Leaves sessile or very shortly petiolate; lamina dark green and often glossy above, pale glaucous beneath, when dry dark brown above, paler beneath, brittle, papyraceous to coriaceous, narrowly to very narrowly obovate, in young plants usually narrower, 1·75–3·5 (usually about 2, in young plants up to 4 times as long as wide, 15–45 x 6–24 cm., up to 150 x 45 cm. in young plants, narrowed to the auricles or decurrent into the petiole, if petiolate cordate at the very base; margin usually recurved.
Corolla in the young bud at the apex as in the mature bud rounded or sometimes obtuse; in the mature bud 2, 5–4 x as long as the calyx, 23–37 mm. long, and rounded or subtruncate at the apex, creamy or sometimes pale yellow; the tube darker than the lobes; tube 1·25–2 x as long as the calyx, 0·9–1·5(1·7) x as long as the lobes; lobes 13–16, narrowly elliptic, spreading.
Sepals pale green, occasionally partially orange, rounded, when dry more or less rugulose and somewhat spreading or the outer ones circular or broader than long, 1–1–1 1/2 x as broad as long, 4–12 x 7–15 mm., the inner ones usually larger, up to about 2 x as long as the others, often partially tom by the development of the corolla.
Berry thick–walled, globose or ellipsoid, rounded at the apex, when dry and mature occasionally apiculate, but not shrivelled, occasionally so when dry and immature.
Twigs with 2(4) spines, which are divergent and confluent at the base, or occasionally unarmed.
Flowers creamy or yellowish-brown in erect inflorescences
Bark pale grey, inner bark yellowish
Tree, 6–20 m. high or more (?).
A tree up to 60 ft. high
Infructescences drooping