Trees, less often shrubs, evergreen, 7-20(-30) m tall; trunk strictly straight, bark gray-brown; branchlets stout, slightly enlarged at nodes. Petiole 5-15 mm, glabrous; leaf blade green when fresh, often drying reddish brown, lanceolate, ovate-lanceolate or oblong, (7-)10-20(-30) × 3-8 cm, typically 3-4(-5) × as long as wide, thinly leathery, both surfaces glabrous, lateral veins 8-10 pairs, reticulate veins dense, conspicuous, base usually rounded, rarely obtuse-cuneate, oblique, margin entire, apex variable, acute to obtuse or rounded, often with a short acumen 3-10 mm. Inflorescences axillary, flowers 2 or 3 in often abbreviated false cymes or racemes to 1 cm, or flowers solitary (mostly pistillate flowers). Flowers mostly unisexual, yellowish or pinkish green, fragrant. Pedicels slender, to 2 cm, longer in fruit, yellowish stellate-tomentose. Sepals 5, united at base, ovate, narrowly oblong, or obovate, 8-9 mm, outside densely yellowish stellate-tomentose, inside appressed pubescent, apex obtuse. Petals 5, becoming reflexed, nearly free, yellowish pink, narrowly ovate-oblong, 12-15 mm, both sides (excl. scale) and margin glabrous or with a few scattered hairs; scales free except at extreme base, linear, subequaling petals, both sides glabrescent to glabrous, margin ciliate. Staminate flowers: stamens 5; filaments ca. 3 mm, dilated at base, tapering toward apex, glabrous; anthers sagittate, ca. 4 mm, connective dilated; pistillode columnar, small, hairy. Pistillate flowers: pedicels tomentose; staminodes 5, similar to anthers but filaments ca. 1.5 mm, with or without anthers; ovary ovoid or obovoid, red-brown setaceous, drying yellowish; placentas 5; ovules 10-15; styles short, hairy; stigmas 5, reflexed, connate, forming a cap at apex of ovary, beneath setaceous like ovary, upper surface glabrous, margin crenate. Berry globose, 8-12 cm in diam.; stalk stout, pericarp orange-brown when fresh, when dried densely blackish hairy at first, gradually glabrescent, finally dark brown with numerous minute white dots, verrucose, scaly; exocarp not fibrous, inner layers woody, thin, crisp when dry. Seeds many, 30-50(-100), 1.5-2.2 × 1-1.7 cm. Fl. Sep, fr. Nov-Jun of next year.
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A tree. bIt grows 7-30 m tall. The leaves are almost entire and broadly sword shaped. They are 12-20 cm long and 3-5 cm wide. They are unequal sided at the base. The flowers are in clusters in the axils of leaves. They have a sweet scent. Trees are separately male and female. The fruit is woody and 10-12 cm across. It contains 30-50 seeds. They are hard and packed in pulp.
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