Shrub to medium-sized tree, 7-20 m, with a large, dense crown and erect branches; bark thin, grey or light brown with small brown pustules or vertical fissures; branchlets terete, appressed whitish-or greyish-pubescent at the tips. Leaves on coppice shoots or young specimens deeply pinnatifid into 3-5 lobes, c. 30 cm long, lobes 1.25-2.5 cm broad; blades of adult trees simple or slightly lobed, narrow-oblong to lanceolate or lanceolate-elliptic, sometimes slightly falcate, long-acuminate, tipped by a minute gland, tapering at the base into a somewhat flattened petiole 1.5-2(-2.5) cm long, 10-20 by 2.5-5 (-7) cm, coriaceous to subcoriaceous, glabrous, shining, and green-olivaceous above, the undersurface rufous-silky initially, changing greyish or whitish with age, hairs ± long and appressed, flabelli-5-nerved, veins and veinlets very oblique and prominent-reticulate on both faces. Panicle terminal, 10-16 (-20) cm, consisting of several greyish-sericeous, upwards curved peduncled racemes 6-8 cm long. Bracts minute, pubescent, caducous. Pedicels mostly in twos, 3-5 mm. Torus slightly oblique. Perianth tubular, globose at the limb (1½ mm), densely silvery appressed-pubescent outside, glabrous inside except the velutinous base, incl. the limb 6-8 mm, sulphur-yellow to greenish-white or-cream. Disk semi-annular, glabrous. Ovary up to 1 mm stipitate, densely whitish-silky, nearly tomentose; style slender, curved, glabrous. Fruit compressed-ellipsoid, inequilateral, crowned by the style-base, glabrous, 3-5 mm pedicelled, when ripe c. 2.5 by 1.5-1.8 cm.
In mountain-forest or in second-growths on rocky, deforested slopes or dry ridges, also in dry savannah-forests, occasionally common in grasslands, 500-1600 m, descending along stony river-banks of the Rouffaer River to 350 m, once found on coastal sands. FL (Jan.-)Aug.-Nov.
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