Erect perennial herb 50–70 cm. tall; stems simple, together with petiole, peduncle, rhachis, pedicels, stipules and calyx covered with very short spidery grey ± dense tomentum and with some gland-tipped hairs on petiole; tendrils absent.. Leaves 5-foliolate; leaflets drying blackish, sessile, oblanceolate to narrowly obovate, 10–13 cm. long, 3–4.5 cm. wide, acute at apex, narrowly cuneate at the base, the outer ones scarcely oblique but much smaller than inner, all densely shortly very acutely serrate, the teeth apiculate, except for basal 1/4 which is entire, rather thick, above densely covered with small ‘subspidery hairs’, beneath with grey or sometimes somewhat fulvous tomentum, denser between veins than on them; venation very densely reticulate, slightly impressed above, conspicuous beneath but covered with tomentum; petiole 2–5 cm. long; stipules lanceolate, 1.2–2 cm. long, 7 mm. wide, acute.. Inflorescences leaf-opposed or terminal, branched, 4–8 cm. long; peduncles 5 cm. long, much shorter than leaves, dichotomously divided into several many-flowered cymes; bracteoles 1–1.5 mm. long; pedicels 0.8–3 mm. long.. Buds 2 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, inflated at base, constricted in upper 2/3, cucullate, subglobose above, beneath with similar but laxer tomentum to pedicels, glabrous above.. Calyx small, entire.. Ovary and very immature fruit glabrous.
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