Tree up to 7 m, with a slender trunk. Young stem covered with bristles, hairs, and spines, older stems with smooth bark with small rounded lenticels and numerous spines. Monocarpic. Leaves rounded, up to 30 by 40 cm, deeply palmately lobed, cordate at base, lobes 5-9 with broad sinuses between them, margin unevenly and sharply dentate, apex acute, upper surface densely covered with evenly spaced bristles of varying size (larger on the main veins), appressed and directed towards the leaf margin, often with woolly hairs inserted on their enlarged bases, the underside very densely woolly and with many bristles, usually bearing crisped hairs on their enlarged bases; petiole 50 cm, 0.5 cm ø at base, terete with clasping base, densely covered with bristles, woolly hairs, and spines. Panicle at first with numerous leaf-like bracts, the principal branches with some spines, rather sparsely covered with bristles and hairs, ultimate branches slender and tomentose, bearing linear bracts c. 4 mm long subtending peduncled umbellules; peduncles up to 5 mm, slender, tomentose, bearing 2 minute bracts. Umbellules spherical, c. 4-5 mm ø in flower, outer bracts not forming a distinct involucre. Flowers hermaphrodite, maturing in basipetal succession, the lower bracts of a branch either with sterile umbellules or lacking flowers; up to 60 in an umbellule, each subtended by a lanceolate ciliolate bract c. 1 mm long, and borne on a glabrous pedicel c. 1.25 mm long. Calyx rim fringed with many lacerate filaments. Petals ovate, c. 1 mm long. Filaments c. 1 mm; anthers c. 0.5 mm long. Ovary covered with cilia which lengthen as the fruit ripens. Mericarps with rounded ribs, long-ciliate, crowned by the divergent styles.
Forested hills, grassy slopes, and roadsides, 100-1800 m.
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