Trees ca. 20 m tall; branchlets of current year and young leaf blades brownish black and oily glossy when dry. Branches sulcate. Petiole 1-1.5 cm; leaf blade ovate to ovate-elliptic, 8-15 × 4-6 cm, papery, abaxially with waxy scalelike trichomes and glaucous when dry, adaxially glabrous, base broadly cuneate, margin entire, apex abruptly acute with a tip blunt to caudate; secondary veins 7-10 on each side of midvein; tertiary veins abaxially slender, evident, subparallel. Male inflorescences 10-15 cm. Female inflorescences to 20 cm; rachis and cupule stalks grayish scurfy; cupules solitary, rarely in clusters of 2, stalk 2-4 mm but 8-10 mm in fruit. Young cupules shortly tubular, concave in center, apex flat; mature cupules basin-shaped, 1-1.2 × 1.6-2.4 cm excluding stalk, enclosing more than 3/4 of nut, with ca. 8 concentric rings, tawny scurfy, wall ca. 1 mm thick. Nut depressed globose, ca. 1 × 1.4-1.8 cm, with tawny appressed minute hairs, base flat, apex rounded; scar ca. 1 cm in diam., concave. Fl. Mar-Jun, fr. Mar-Jun of following year.