Habit: woody scramblers; new shoots silky hairy; older shoots ridged, glabrous, brown. Leaves: cotyledons two, linear, opposite; seedling leaves basically trilobed, each lobe further divided and toothed, lamina extending down blade; petioles as long as blades. Adult leaves alternate, elliptic, 80–105 mm long, 9–22 mm wide, thick; petioles to 10 mm long, apices rounded with a a small mucro. Inflorescences dense, corymbose, leafy panicles of almost actinomorphic flowers with parts in fives around the pistil; bracts insignificant, caducous. Sepals 3–4 mm long, cream-red, basally thickened, sparsely hairy; petals 12–21 mm long, clawed, slightly downturning, connivent in throat, then recurving, bicoloured: yellow grading to orange-red, darkening with age. Stamens with filaments initially adnate to petal joins, and regularly placed around the pistil, conspiculusly flanged/winged particularly above the middle, initially connivent at anthesis; anthers much smaller than filaments, free, sagittate, white; pollen pink-cream. Pistil with a thick fleshy receptacle, interstaminal lobed basal nectary, stipitate, glabrous ovary, eventually bilocular rarely trilocular; style to three times length of ovary, exserted at anthesis, stigma development minimal. Fruit are loculicidally dehiscent chartaceous capsules: 7–9 mm long, 3–4 mm diam., thin, spindle-shaped. Seeds numerous, minutely pitted, ridged, wrinkled. Flowering in spring.
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