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Leaves 5–15 × 2–8 cm, ovate or elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, shortly obtusely acuminate at the apex, coarsely crenate on the margin, cuneate or rounded-cuneate at the base, soft when fresh, chartaceous and brittle when dried, sparingly puberulous only along the midrib beneath at first, soon becoming completely glabrous, dull, pale or dark green, often purplish-tinged when young; lateral nerves in 6–8 pairs, looped well within the margin, scarcely prominent above, slightly so beneath.
Male flowers: pedicels extending to 1 cm at anthesis, slender, flexuous, glabrous; calyx lobes 3, 1 × 1.3 mm, broadly triangular, subacute, glabrous, pale greenish-white, sometimes mauve-tinged; extrastaminal disk of several irregularly connate, flat, pubescent glands; interstaminal glands erect, rhomboidal, truncate, pubescent, purple; stamens 8–13, 2 of which are central, the rest peripheral, 0.5 mm long, white or purplish-brown.
A straggling shrub. It can grow 4.5 m tall. The bark is rough. The leaves are alternate and simple. They are oval and 5-15 cm long by 2-8 cm wide. The base is wedge shaped and they taper to the tip. The flowers are in rounded groups 1-2 cm long. There are fewer female flowers than male flowers. The fruit are a 3 lobed capsule.
Female flowers: pedicels 3–4 mm long, stouter than in male; calyx lobes smaller than in male, ciliate, yellow; disk glands 3, scale-like; ovary 1 mm in diameter, 3-lobed, sparingly puberulous to subglabrous, purple; styles 1 mm long, free, stigmas fimbriate-laciniate, white.
Male inflorescences 1–2 cm long, densely glomerulate, sessile or shortly pedunculate, the peduncles glabrous; bracts minute, ciliate.
Fruit 3 × 6 mm, tricoccous, or by abortion di-or monococcous, glabrous or subglabrous, greenish, reddish or purplish.
Stipules 1 mm wide, broadly triangular, slightly accrescent, becoming mammillate-umbonate but scarcely spinulose.
Seeds 2.5–3 mm in diameter, shallowly foveolate-reticulate, yellow, orange or red.
Female inflorescences similar to those of the male, but fewer flowered.
Young growth evenly to sparingly puberulous or glabrous.
Twigs pale green or grey-green, evenly lenticellate.
A shrub commonly to 1.5 m tall, sometimes taller.
Petioles 0.5–2.5 cm long, purplish.
Bark rough.
