Erect shrub to 4 m tall, unbranched, the leaves born at the stem apex, the leaf bearing portion of the apex mostly 4-5 mm wide. Leaves ovate, acute or acuminate at each end, mostly 15-25 cm long, 5-9 cm wide, entire, stiff and coriaceous, often drying with a light gray cast, the lateral veins nearly straight, only slightly ascending, forking near the margin and forming a submarginal vein and in places a marginal vein, the minor venation indistinct, the tertiary veins more or less at right angles to the secondaries near the center of the leaf; petiole unwinged or inconspicuously so, slender, flat and drying angled, slender, elon-gate, often drying black in the basal 1 cm, glabrous. Inflorescences (ex Mez) few flowered, ca. 10-flowered, laxly racemose, glabrous, much shorter than the leaves; pedicels slender, to 3 mm long; bracts narrowly triangular bearing scales near the base. Flowers (ex Mez) small or to 5 mm diam., the sepals ovate, rotund, fimbriate-crenulate; staminodes thick, subglobose, not joined, the anthers free, exserted, the free part of the tube shorter than the anthers. Fruit (immature) globose, minutely apiculate, subtended by the persistent, greenish, applied sepals, 5-10 mm across.
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