Shrub or small tree, the younger stems, petioles, lower leaf-surface, inflores-cence, and hypanthia cinereous or ferruginous with stellate hairs; leaves sessile, oblanceolate to obovate, up to 4 dm. long, a third to half as wide, abruptly short-acuminate, entire or denticulate, rounded to a cordate-clasping base, glabrous above at maturity; panicle large, divaricately branched; flowers 5-merous, sessile in small glomerules; hypanthium cup-shaped to obconic, 1.5-2.5 mm. long; calyx-tube prolonged about 0.5 mm., nearly truncate, often erose; exterior teeth broadly triangular, adnate, projecting about 0.2 mm.; petals white, about 2.5 mm. long; stamens weakly dimorphic; ovary 3-celled, half-inferior; style slender, 8-10 mm. long; stigma ,truncate.
The more open areas of early and middle secondary forests, plantations, fencerows, pastures, and roadsides. Moist or wet, mixed forest or thickets, often in second growth; at elevations up to 1,300 metres in Guatemala.
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