Tree up to 4 m, with a slender spiny trunk. Young stems covered more or less densely with woolly hairs, bristles, and spines with bulbous bases, the spines enlarging on older stems. Leaves rounded, variable in size, often 60 cm or more in diameter, deeply palmately lobed, usually peltate in mature leaves, sinuses between the lobes broad or narrow, lobes 7-10, usually sharply and irregularly incised and toothed, apex acute, upper surface rather sparsely covered with evenly-spaced, appressed, sometimes branched hairs (denser on the main veins), underside densely clothed with a soft, woolly tomentum, often with some bristles on the main veins; petiole c. 60 cm, 1 cm ø at base, terete with clasping base, densely covered with woolley hairs, bristles, and some spines. Inflorescence up to c. 70 cm long, main branches rather sparsely covered with a short tomentum and, when young, bearing numerous bracts similar to the leaves but smaller, not peltate, and often 3-lobed or entire; ultimate branchlets slender and often woolly-tomentose, bearing minute linear bracts which subtend the sessile umbellules. Umbellules about 4 mm ø in flower, the broadly ovate outer bracts forming a more or less distinct involucre. Flowers hermaphrodite or male, either mixed in an inflorescence, or separate, c. 10-15 per umbellule, each subtended by a lanceolate receptacular bract c. 2 mm long. Pedicel c. ½ mm long. Calyx rim fringed. Petals strap-shaped, c. 1.5 mm long at anthesis. Filaments c. 2 mm; anthers c. 0.3 mm long, orbicular. Ovary covered with cilia which lengthen as the fruit ripens. Mericarps long-ciliate, crowned with the divergent styles.
Usually in rather dry, open localities, but also in forest, in secondary forest, also pioneering on rocks, in grasslands and on lava-streams, 300-1800 m. Fl.fr. April-Nov. Schmutz found it in Flores flowering in--10, but leaves had fallen.
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