Small trees with several stems, up to 4 m high, trunks 2-5 cm thick, rarely branched; wood coarse, long-fibrous, pithed; bark smooth, flaking, grey-green; roots tuberous, with fleshy fusiform swellings. Leaves twice (rarely thrice) compound, first division digitate, bearing vertebrate leaflets; petiole terete, 20-30 cm long, (2)3-3.5(4) mm thick ribbed, glabrous. Stipules intrapetiolar, adnate to the base of the petiole and joined to each other at the base, up to 4 cm long, glabrous or hairy; leaflets spreading at an angle to the petiole, the whole sub-circular in outline, up to 30 cm in diam.; leaflets 8-12 per leaf, vertebrate or twice or thrice vertebrate (rarely simple) chartaceous, thickly coriaceous when mature, glossy green above, dark green beneath; 15-25 cm long, with 1-5 articulations, scaly-papillate at the articulations, petioles 5-10 cm long, occasionally narrowly winged, rhachilla wings obtriangular to obhastate; pinnules 3-10 cm long, lanceolate, broadly ovate, obovate or oblong, base cuneate, margins sparsely to distinctly serrate, apex mucronate. Inflorescence a terminal umbel, consisting of 8-26 pedunculate fairly dense, cylindrical racemes arranged on much abbreviated club-shaped, bracteate apices of the stems; peduncles of racemes 20-35 cm long; bracts subtending the peduncles joined at the base and adnate to the peduncle, bilobed, up to 3 cm long, often hairy, carinate, caducous; racemes 20-30 cm long, 3-5 cm in diameter. Pedicels slender, 0.7-3 cm long; bracts subulate, 5-8 mm long. Flowers loosely spirally arranged fairly densely in the racemes, but not compacted, buds sphaeroid 5-10 mm long; petals in bud about equal or slightly longer than the ovary. Calyx reduced to a 5-toothed rim. Petals 5, deltoid, greenish white, acute, spreading and starlike when open, caducous. Stamens 5, spreading-erect alternating with the petals; filaments as long as the petals, white; anthers oblong, introrse, versatile, caducous. Ovary 2-loculed, broadly oblong 3-4 mm long and 2.5-3 mm wide; disc conical, raised, ribbed; style 2, spreading, eventually recurved. Fruits 1(2)-seeded, 5-8 mm long and 3-5 mm wide, goblet-shaped, exocarp mauve, fleshy when ripe, calyx and styles persistent. Seeds triangular in outline, planoconvex, rugose, crested in upper third; raphe ending in an ovate areole, endosperm ruminate.
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Leaflets 5–8, up to 15 × 7 cm., with petiolules up to 35 mm., coriaceous, glabrous to slightly puberulent; the lobes very variable in outline, but commonly narrowly obovate to narrowly oblanceolate, with decurrent deltate wings on the petiole similar to those of C. spicata.
Inflorescence a group of densely-flowered pedunculate racemes up to 25 cm. long, with numerous linear-acute basal bracts up to 2 cm. long.
Flowers with glabrous or slightly scabrous pedicels 5–12 mm. long; bracteoles linear-lanceolate, similar in length to the pedicels.
Margins remotely and irregularly serrate, slightly undulate; apex acute, obtuse or even deeply emarginate; base cuneate.
Fruit ovoid, c. 6 mm. long, glabrous; axis and pedicels probably elongating somewhat to maturity.
Leaves digitately compound, generally similar to those of C. spicata.
Stylopodium conical, conspicuous in fruit, up to 2 mm. long.
Calyx forming a relatively prominent cup.
Petiole up to 35 cm. long, glabrous.
Small tree up to 10 m. high.
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