Tree to 25 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough to the small branches, vertically fissured, flaky and box-type or thinly tessellated, crumbly, grey-brown over red-brown.Branchlets smooth (glabrous); elongated oil bodies sometimes present in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 1.5–2.5 cm long; blade lanceolate, 10–21 cm long, 1.2–3.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, discolorous, glossy, green, smooth, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein present and close to margin, oil glands usually visible, island, one per areole, sometimes obscure.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles 0.7–1.6(2.6) cm long, buds 7 per umbel, pedicels 0.4–1.8 cm long. Mature buds obovoid to pyriform, plump, 1.1–1.2 cm long, 0.6–0.7 cm wide, very scurfy (whitish scaly surface due to fragmenting rubber cuticle), scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum shallowly rounded to conical, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt and papillose at least around the margin, locules 4, the placentae each with ca 7 ovule rows or ovules not arranged in clear rows. Flowers creamy white.Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.4–1.8 cm long), urn-shaped to barrel-shaped contracted slightly in upper part with the rim slightly flared, 1.7–2.4(3) cm long, 1.1–1.5(2) cm wide, always longer than wide with length 1.3 to 1.7 times the width, smooth or scurfy, disc descending vertically, valves 4, enclosed.Seeds brown, 8–10 mm long, ellipsoidal with terminal wing, hilum subterminal. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons large, reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, setose with bristle-glands for at least 12 internodes; leaves always shortly petiolate (to 0.8 cm), opposite for at least 12 nodes, narrowly oblong to elliptical then lanceolate, 9.5–19 cm long, 1.5–3.5 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, relatively thick-textured, discolorous, mid-green, dull until ca node 6–7 then slightly glossy on upperside, setose on lower side until ca node 8–9 then glabrous.
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