Trees usually less than 15 m tall. Branchlets light tawny, dark gray, or silver-gray, glabrous or pubescent, sparsely lenticellate; lenticels raised. Leaves usually congested at apex of branches; petiole 0.5-4.5 cm; leaf blade (5-)10-15 × 2-4.5 cm, papery to leathery, concolorous, with ± translucent, minute (visible under hand lens) scalelike glands, base cuneate to subrounded and symmetric or oblique, margin dentate, shallowly undulate, or rarely entire, apex acuminate to acute; secondary veins 9-26 on each side of midvein, ending in teeth; tertiary veins abaxially slender, evident, subparallel. Male inflorescences often with female flowers borne at base of rachis; Female inflorescences less than 10 cm; cupules in clusters of ca. 3 or sometimes solitary. Infructescences 5-7; rachis 3-4 mm thick. Cupule cupular to subglobose, 2.2-4.5 × 2.5-5.5 cm, enclosing ca. 1/2 of nut, wall (1-)2-3 mm thick, woody, and basally thickened; bracts triangular to rhomboid, center and margin ridged or fused with cupule and ± united into concentric rings. Nut subglobose to turbinate, rarely glabrous, apex rounded, flat, or slightly concave, wall ± horny and usually thicker than wall of cupule; scar covering 1/2 to most of nut, convex. Cotyledons 4-8-lobed. Fl. almost all year around but mainly May-Jul, fr. maturing on 1-year-old branchlets.
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A small tree. It grows 8-10 m high. The trunk is much branched. The leaves are usually crowded neat the tips of the branches. The leaf stalk is 0.5-4.5 cm long. The leaf blade is 10-15 cm long by 2-4.5 cm wide. It is papery to leathery. The edges can have teeth and be wavy. The male flowering stalks often have female flowers near their base. The female flowering stalks are less than 10 cm long. Abut 3 fruit cups occur together. They enclose about half the nut.
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