Home
A shrub or tree. It is often 1-5 m tall but can be 12 m tall. The young bark is smooth and silvery grey but becomes darker and cracked. The leaves are alternate. They are large and oval. They are 5-25 cm long. When young they have star shaped hairs. The base of the leaf is rounded. The leaf stalk is 1-2 cm long. The veins underneath the leaf are raised. The flowers are small and whit or pink. They have a scent. They occur in large dense bunches. They are in the axils of leaves. The fruit is pale but becomes a dull brown as it ripens. They are papery winged capsules. The wings are unequal and spread sideways up to 5 cm. They have soft hairs. The capsule breaks open to release the seed.
Leaf-lamina up to 20 × 13 cm., ovate to oblong, acute or obtuse at the apex, with margin entire or repand, rounded or cordate at the base, stellate-pubescent when young but very soon becoming glabrous, 3–5-nerved at the base; petiole up to 6 cm. long, stellate-pubescent; stipules up to 8 mm. long, setaceous, stellate-pubescent, very caducous.
Inflorescence of axillary cymes; peduncles up to 3·5 cm. long and as long as or longer than the petioles, stellate-pubescent; primary branches c. 5, c. 2·5 cm. long, each terminating in a cymule of c. 5–7 flowers; pedicels 0·3–1·0 cm. long, stellate-pubescent; bracts c. 2 mm. long, subulate, stellate-pilose, caducous.
Female flowers with many short sterile stamens 2–3 mm. long and with a sessile 2-lobed stellately pilose ovary c. 1·3 mm. in diam., with 1 or sometimes 2 ovules per loculus; style c. 1 mm. long, pubescent; stigma 2–3-lobed, 1·5 mm. wide, conical.
Calyx campanulate, divided c. 3/4 of the way down into 2–3 lobes; lobes 3–4 mm. long, broadly triangular, acute or acuminate, often unequal, densely stellate-pubescent outside.
Capsule up to 1·5 cm. long, ellipsoid, 2-valved, each valve with 2 unequal obtuse foliaceous wings 2–5 × 1–2 cm. spreading horizontally in a vertical plane, stellate-pubescent.
Male flowers with many stamens c. 4 mm. long; filaments joined at the base; ovary absent.
Small tree up to c. 8 m. tall; young branchlets sparsely stellately hairy, soon glabrous.
Seed usually solitary, 8 × 5 mm., ellipsoid, brown, finely reticulate, villous.
Petals white, 5–6 mm. long, narrowly obovate to obovate, narrowed to the base.
Flowers unisexual, dioecious or more rarely monoecious.
