Tree 8 m, often with long drooping branches. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough to the small branches, thick, tessellated, grey-brown to brown over reddish.Branchlets lack oil glands in the pith; surface only slightly scabrid with the remains of sparse bristle-glands; glaucous or non-glaucous.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, slightly scabrid; juvenile leaves sessile, opposite, cordate-ovate, to 12 cm long, to 7 cm wide, smooth to weakly scabrid. Crown of juvenile leaves, opposite, sessile or on very short petioles (0–0.2 cm); blade cordate to broadly elliptical, (4.5)6–16 cm long, 3–8.6 cm wide, base amplexicaul, margin entire, apex pointed or rounded, concolorous, dull, yellow-green to light green to grey-green, smooth, side-veins at a wide angle to the midrib (penniveined), reticulation very dense, intramarginal vein present, close to the margin, oil glands apparently absent, leaf surface weakly scabrid with remains of bristle-glands (setae) or leaf smooth.Inflorescence terminal and compound or solitary in upper axils, peduncles rounded or angled, 0.5–2 cm long, buds 3 or 7 per umbel, pedicels up to 1.2 cm long or rarely buds sessile. Mature buds pyriform (1–1.6 cm long, 0.8–1.1 cm wide), glaucous or non-glaucous, moderately setose with bristle-glands, scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum beaked, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers versatile, dorsifixed, oblong, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt and with a fringe of papillae, locules (3)4, with 5 vertical ovule rows, or the rows indistinct on the placentae. Flowers pink or white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.9 cm long), urceolate to truncate-globose, with a neck which may be slightly flared outwards at the rim, 2.1–3(3.5) cm long and wide, surface rough, disc descending vertically, valves (3)4, enclosed.Seeds brown, 10–16 mm long, ellipsoidal with terminal wing, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons large, reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, setose with bristle-glands; leaves sessile or very shortly petiolate (petioles to 0.2 cm), opposite for at least 10 nodes, oblong to elliptical to cordate or almost orbicular, 3.5–9.7 cm long, 2–6.1 cm wide, base rounded to amplexicaul, apex usually rounded, dull, mid-green, ± concolorous, slightly setose on margin and midrib only tending to virtually glabrous by ca node 10 especially on upper side.
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