Marlock (single-stemmed small tree branching low) to 3 m tall, trunk slender. Lignotuber absent. Bark smooth throughout, shiny, grey over rich red-brown. Branchlets with large, clear oil glands in the pith. Juvenile growth (coppice or field seedlings to 50 cm): not seen. Adult leaves thick, held erect, alternate, petioles 2–3 cm long; blade elliptical to sub-orbicular or ovate, (4.2)5–7 cm long, 2.5–4 cm wide, base tapering to petiole, margin entire or distantly indented, apex rounded and apiculate or shallowly emarginate, concolorous, green, side-veins acute, intramarginal vein remote from margin, reticulation obscured by numerous round oil glands. Inflorescence axillary unbranched, peduncles down-turned, strap-like, 1–4.5 cm long, buds (3)7, sessile to shortly pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.6 cm long). Mature buds more or less ovoid (1.5–1.7 cm long, 0.9–1 cm wide), egg-in-eggcup, i.e. the operculum narrower than the hypanthium at the join, scar present, operculum bluntly conical to rounded, grossly warty and pink to red contrasting with the green hypanthium with 4–6 prominent longitudinal ridges, stamens inflexed to varying degrees (rarely one or two outer stamens erect), anthers narrowly oblong, versatile, dorsifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, style long and straight, stigma blunt, locules 5(6), the placentae each with 6 vertical rows of ovules. Flowers with red (rarely pale pink) filaments and cream anthers. Fruit sessile to shortly pedicellate (pedicels 0–0.1 cm long), obconical, 1.5–1.8 cm long, 1.4–2 cm wide, disc level and finally descending, valves 5(6), at rim level or enclosed. Seeds shiny blackish brown, 1–2 mm long, flattened-ovoid, dorsal surface shallowly reticulate, hilum ventral. Cultivated seedlings (measured at node 10): cotyledons Y-shaped (bisected); stems rounded in cross-section, scabrid; leaves always petiolate, opposite for 3 or 4 nodes then alternate, ovate or deltoid, 3–4.5 cm long, 2.5–3.5 cm wide, dull, green, scabrid on surfaces and margins for at least 11 nodes. Scabridity due to bristle-glands.
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