Small slender trees or shrubs of lower storey or becoming part of canopy, up to 22 m high, bole up to 45 cm in diam. Bark grey or grey-brown with vertical fissures, sub-smooth, greenish, white laterally on lenticellate ridges, blaze pale greenish white, brown or dark pustular and horizontally ridged, undersurface orange green, middle bark green and red, inner bark light brown, straw brown, white or pinkish, cream, light orange-brown and red mottled, slash 5 mm thick, underbark orange, brownish green to reddish brown with light green to white lines; wood white, very light brownish white or straw-coloured with very fine rays of yellow, red below, moderately hard to soft. Leaves alternate to fasciculate; blades from elliptic, narrowly elliptic to obovate, sometimes slightly oblique, 4-20 by 1.2-7.5 cm, apex mucronulate to mucronate, sometimes cuspidate, base cuneate to obtuse, margins revolute, firmly chartaceous or subcoriaceous, shining brown or green on both surfaces, papillate and frequently glaucous beneath or purplish green or light green tinged with purple in young leaves, dark yellow-green, or olive green in old leaves, lateral veins 7-14 pairs, impressed above, slightly ascending below, dark reddish purple or red on the lower side of midrib; petiole triangular, sulcate above, articulate, red, whitish grey or silvery, 1-15 cm long. Staminate inflorescences 3-7 cm long, calyx 4-6-lobed, lobes narrowly elliptic, free, entire or with serrulate apex, 1.5 mm long, longer than androecium, caducous, articulate, greenish, purple, dark purplish red, brown, or closed stamens reddish purple, open ones dark brown, stamens 5-8, anthers purple, purplish blue, pruinose, violet-purple in bud, filaments oblong, 0.2-1 mm long; pedicels terete, 2-12 cm long. Pistillate inflorescences flat, 3-5 cm long, 0.8 mm wide, bluish-purple flower buds subtended by pale green bracts; calyx 4-6-lobed, linear to elliptic, 1-6 mm long, longer than gynoecium, caducous, articulate (called glands by Gage), greenish purple, greenish cream, ovary bluish green or greyish purple, staminodia green, tinged with violet-purple in bud, styles divaricate, stigmas recurved, dark or red; pedicels flat, 2-12 cm long, green; bracts narrowly elliptic, 3 mm long, partially persistent. Fruiting axes angulate, 2-8.5 cm long, red; calyx caducous. Drupes lustrous, ovoid or elliptic globose, 5-11 mm in diam., rounded on both ends, young drupes glaucous, green, olive green or yellow green turning purple, red, dark purple blue, reddish purple, brown or black at maturity; style divaricate, staminodial scars persistent; fruit stalks angulate, 4-15 mm long, 1 mm wide. Fig. 3 a-f. Fig. 4. Fig. 5.
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