Small to medium-sized, dioecious tree 3-15 m, with broad trunk 15-55 cm ø; rarely with thick buttresses to 1 m; bark pale grey to dark brown, smooth or fissured; blaze dull brown; wood soft, white or straw-coloured. Leaves elliptic to somewhat obovate, 6-14 by 3-8 cm, shortly acuminate at the apex, narrowly cuneate at the base, crenate or crenate-dentate, the tips of the crenations with brown to black thickenings (hydathodes), dark green and shiny; nerves 12-20 pairs; petiole 0.4-2 cm; stipules tri-angular-subulate, 0.5-1.5 mm long from a narrow sheath; leafless nodes with short to cylindrical sheaths 3-10 mm long bearing leaf vestiges about 1 mm long. Inflorescences green, terminal but often also borne in axils of upper leaves (up to 4 nodes be-low apex); branches 5-8, slender, (l-)2.5-3.5 cm, each unbranched or again branched, the flowers well spaced with internodes 2-8 mm; lower bracts of Inflorescence similar to sheaths at leafless nodes, the upper longer, 0.5-1.5 mm long; bracteoles supporting the flowers deltoid, 0.5 mm long or almost obsolete. Male flowers with 2 yellowish anthers 2-3 mm long. Female flowers with cream ovary and unequally bilobed sessile stigma. Fruits drying yellow-brown but said to be black (WHITMORE), translucent green or greenish cream, ovoid, 1.2-2 mm long, exocarp thin and finely wrinkled (dry state); endocarp ± discoid, straw-coloured, smooth.
Primary rain-forest, also open forest and hillside forest, 450-750 m. Male fl.--07; fr. June, Oct.
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