Unarmed shrub up to 5 m. tall, usually intertwined with other bushes, often subscandent, heavily browsed down if free-standing; stems usually with corky wings; bark smooth, grey, hardly peeling, bluish green when young; slash pink, striped; exudate sparse, colourless, odourless; young twigs 1.5–5 mm. in diameter, 5-angled, puberulous.. Leaves 3-foliolate, crisped puberulous to tomentose beneath, more sparsely so above; petiole 1–6.5 cm. long; lateral leaflets subsessile, cuneate, obovate, elliptic or circular, asymmetrically acute at the base, coarsely and irregularly serrate, 15–65 mm. long, 10–55 mm. wide; terminal leaflet spathulate-obovate, with 4–6 lateral veins on each side, 25–75 mm. long, 17–65 mm. wide.. Flowers precocious or with the young leaves in sessile clusters; bracts narrowly triangular-acuminate, loosely woolly, up to 3.5 mm. long.. Calyx with receptacle 3 mm. long, including 1 mm. triangular lobes, glabrous except for the woolly margin.. Petals narrowly elliptic, densely appressed pilose outside, 5–6 mm. long.. Filaments 4 and 2 mm., anthers 1.0 and 0.7 mm. long.. Disc glabrous.. Fruit glabrous, sessile, flattened-ovoid, rather pointed, 10–12 × 6–8 × (2 + 3) mm.; pericarp 2-valved; pseudaril with 2 narrow angular facial arms, that on the sterile locule ± 3/5 as long as the stone, the other shorter, sutural arms absent; stone flattened-ovoid, rather acute, slightly granulate, the sterile locule markedly narrower than the fertile, both faces gently convex, dimensions 8 × 5.5 × (1.5 + 2.3) mm.. Fig. 8/16–20, p. 52.
Home