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A shrub. It can be erect or lie along the ground. It grows 1-4 m high. It can be taller. The leaves are alternate. The leaves are papery and more pale underneath. The leaves are 7-13 cm long by 3-6 cm wide. The are rounded at both ends. There are about 5 pairs of side veins. The flowers are yellow. Male flowers can be in groups of 2-3. The female flowers are slightly smaller than the male flowers. The fruit are a flattened oval shape and 3 cm long by about 4 cm wide. They are hairy. There are 3-8 seeds that are 1.5 cm long and dull brown.
Scandent or erect, very hairy, forest shrub, 1-14 m high; branchlets patent, at ± right angles to stem, leafy, bearing flowers at apex. Leaves alternate, petioled, shortly tomentose, broadly obovate-oblong. Flowers female or functionally male; axillary or in 2-or 3-flowered pseudo-racemes, pentamerous, yellow, fragrant; stamens 10, reduced to staminodes in female flower; ovary densely tomentose, 8-10-celled. Flowering time July-May. Fruit globose-pentagonal, densely hispid. Seed 3-8.
Leaves chartaceous, drying dull brown above, much paler beneath; lamina 3 x 1·5–6·5 x 3·5 cm., obovate–oblong, apex usually broadly rounded and slightly emarginate, sometimes obtuse, base usually cordate to rounded; margin slightly revolute, lateral nerves in c. 5 pairs, together with the reticulate tertiary nerves and veins deeply impressed above and prominent beneath; lower surface sparsely to densely pubescent with long, slender, appressed or spreading hairs, rarely tomentose.
Male flowers solitary or in 2–3 flowered cymes, axillary, pentamerous; peduncle up to 1·5 cm. long; pedicel (including peduncle of solitary flowers) 0·5–2 cm. long; bracts 2, 0·4–0·8 cm. long, ovate to linear–oblanceolate, subopposite.
Fruiting calyx strongly accrescent, closely surrounding but not completely concealing the fruit except when young; lobes up to 3 x 2 cm., ovate, densely puberulous, with prominent longitudinal nerves.
Ovary 0·3 cm. long, ovoid–conoidal, 5·angled, densely strigose–tomentose, especially on the angles; locules 10, style short, densely pubescent, the 5 branches glabrous distally.
Corolla up to 1·2 cm. long, deeply divided; lobes oblong, reflexed, broadly acute at apex, tomentose outside except at the base and where overlapped in bud.
Pistillode conoidal, fulvous–tomentose; locules 10; common style short, stout, densely puberulous, the 5 branches long and glabrous distally.
Stamens 10,0·35–0·4 cm. long; filaments up to 0·05 cm. long, glabrous; anthers up to 0·35 cm. long, lanceolate, densely strigose–setose.
Calyx up to 0·7 cm. long, cleft almost to the base; lobes ovate–lanceolate, fulvous–tomentose, the margins often reduplicate.
Fruit up to 3 x 3·8 cm., depressed–globose, tardily dehiscent, densely hispid–tomentose with long, deciduous bristles.
Erect or scandent shrub 1–4 m high (elsewhere sometimes much taller) or a rhizomatous suffrutex c. 0·5 m. high.
Staminodes 10, 0·2 cm. long; filaments glabrous; antherodes densely strigose.
Seeds 3–8, up to 1·5 cm. long, dull brown, endosperm smooth.
Female flowers similar to the male but slightly smaller.
Disk indistinct.
