Tree to 15 m tall. Forming a lignotuber.Bark rough over trunk and branches extending to small limbs, tight, thick, chunky, tessellated, grey-brown over light red-brown.Branchlets smooth (glabrous); lacking elongated oil glands in the pith.Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): stems rounded in cross-section, glabrous; leaves always petiolate, opposite only at lower nodes then alternate, elliptical to lanceolate, 6.5–10.5 cm long, 2.3–3 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, apex rounded or pointed, dull, green, glabrous.Crown dark green.Adult leaves alternate, petioles 0.7–2.3 cm long; blade lanceolate to falcate, 7.6–15.5(18) cm long, 1–2.5(3) cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire, apex pointed, discolorous, glossy to slightly glossy or dull, dark green, smooth, side-veins greater than 45° to midrib, reticulation dense to very dense, intramarginal vein present, oil glands usually visible, island, one per areole or obscure sometimes.Inflorescence terminal compound, peduncles 0.7–2.3 cm long; buds 7 per umbel, usually pedicellate (pedicels 0–1.4 cm). Mature buds obovoid to pyriform or sub-globular, 1.1–1.7 cm long, 0.7–1.2 cm wide, surface greyish scurfy due to fragmenting rubber cuticle, scar absent (both opercula shed together at flowering), operculum shallowly rounded to conical, umbonate or not, stamens inflexed, all fertile, anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt with some obvious long papillae around edge, locules 4, the placentae each with ca 7 ± indistinct ovule rows. Flowers creamy white.Fruit usually pedicellate (pedicels 0–1 cm long), ± urn-shaped to barrel-shaped, often much longer than wide, slightly contracted to form a neck with the thick rim slightly flared or the neck lacking and the rim not flared, length 2–3.1 cm, 1.3–2 cm wide, ± smooth, disc descending vertically, valves 4, enclosed.Seeds brown, 9–12 mm long, ellipsoidal with terminal wing, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at ca node 10): cotyledons reniform; stems rounded in cross-section, sparsely setose with short bristle-glands for only ca 2–5 nodes then glabrous; leaves always shortly petiolate, opposite for at least 10 nodes, lowest leaves elliptical becoming narrowly oblong-lanceolate, 6.5–8 cm long, 1.4–1.6 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, discolorous, ± glossy, green, only sparsely setose on lower leaves, glabrous after ca 3 pairs.
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