Tree, 12-30 m by 20-60 cm ø; bark dark-grey, smooth or cracked. Branchlets initially with dense, brownish, short-stellate tomentum; glabrescent, slender, densely lenticellate; terminal bud ovoid-globose, 2-3 mm by 2-3 mm, scales ovate-acute. Stipules ovate-acute, 2 by 1 mm. Leaves 8-14 by 3-5½ cm (index 2.4-3.2), widest below the middle to sometimes about the middle; base rounded acute, top attenuate and acute to 1 cm acuminate; surfaces discolorous, above more or less glossy, greenish, glabrous, beneath dull cinnamon-brown, with thick cover of adpressed, stellate scales (magnification 20!) and on the veins some (often acro-scopically bent) hairs often branched near their base; midrib and nerves prominent beneath, flattish above; nerves 9-10 pairs at an angle of 45-60°, ascending, subparallel, arcuating towards the margin; reticulation fine, dense, scalariform, sometimes obscure above; petiole slender, 1-1½ cm, adaxially shallowly furrowed. Male rachis 5-10 cm, 1-1½ mm ø; bracts and bracteoles ovate-acute; ♂ flowers in clusters of 3, perianth deeply incised, lobes 6, rounded-acute, 1 by ½-1 mm, with dense tomentum outside, stamens 12, filaments 2½-3 mm, anthers ¼ mm long, pistillode c. 1 mm ø. Female rachis 5-10 cm, in the axil of an ovate-acute bract on the upper part of a new shoot; ♀ flowers solitary, perianth deeply incised, lobes 6, rounded-acute, 1 by 1 mm, with dense tomentum outside, staminodes 12, rudimentary, ovary 3-locular, styles 3, conical, 1-1½ mm. Ripe cupule chocolate-brownish, subsessile, obovoid-globose but adaxially flattened, 4-4½ by 3-3½ cm, base attenuating into the short peduncle; wall 2-4 mm thick, with some sparse fulvous pu-berulence and very sparsely set with 3-4 curved rows of mostly solitary spines, sturdy, often somewhat flat and recurved, 5-7 mm long, subglab-rous, the adaxial sector not spiny. Fruit solitary, obovoid-globose, c. 4 by 3 cm, wall woody, 5-7 mm thick, completely adnate to the cupule, when ripe rugose and glabrous.
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