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Understorey trees up to about 8 m tall or shrubs with red wood and rough ridged, grey or brown bark which does not flake; branches spreading; young branchlets with scattered raised lenticels, glabrous or puberulous. Leaves tardily deciduous, immature at time of flowering, radiating in a horizontal plane from the tips of young shoots in a somewhat digitate pattern; blade narrowly elliptic, 5-10 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm broad, apex attenuate-acuminate, base cuneate, regularly and closely serrulate, stiffly membranous, lateral veins curving upwards from midrib; stipules intrapetiolar, fused. Flowers usually in (2)6-10-flowered racemes, on short lateral spurs below new leafy shoots (tropical forms with many-flowered elongate racemes); pedicels thin, up to 3 cm in fruit, articulated above base, glabrous or puberulous. Sepals narrowly elliptic, c. 9 mm long, obtuse, ivory at anthesis, up to 1.5 cm long, red, pink, purple or green and spreading in fruit, somewhat crinkled when dried. Petals obovate, about 1 cm long, clawed, pale to bright yellow, caducous. Stamens c. 40, with filaments 3 mm long; anthers 1.5 mm long, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Carpels 5(-6), erect; style with a swollen, lobed stigma. Drupelets basally to swollen torus.
Understorey tree, 0.5-12.0 m high; wood red; bark rough ridged, grey or brown, young branches with raised lenticels. Leaves immature at flowering, shortly petiolate, narrowly elliptic, base cuneate, apex attenuate-acuminate, margins regularly serrate; veins distinctly reticulate below; stipules intrapetiolar, fused. Pedicels slender, up to 30 mm in fruit. Sepals narrowly elliptic, ivory-coloured at anthesis, red, pink, purple or green in fruit. Petals obovate, pale to bright yellow, fugaceous. Stamens ± 40; filaments 3 mm long, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Carpels 5(6), stigmas swollen, lobed. Flowering time Oct., Nov.
Leaves petiolate; lamina (3) 5–12·2 × (1·2) 1·5–3·9 (4·3) cm., oblanceolate or obovate to elliptic or oblong, acute or acutely to obtusely acuminate at the apex, with margin densely curved-serrulate, cuneate at the base (more rarely narrowed to a rounded base), herbaceous to chartaceous, with numerous widely spreading lateral nerves (usually at almost 90° to the midrib) and densely reticulate tertiary venation prominent above (with main laterals rather more prominent than subsidiaries) and smooth below; petiole 1–3 (3·5) mm. long, rather slender, grooved above.
Tree 3–20 m. high (to 27 m. in East Africa), with bark smooth, grey or grey-brown; branches ± quadrangular, purplish-brown and glabrous or very rarely papillose-puberulous at first, becoming striate or slightly ridged and glabrous, with bark not exfoliating, with numerous small lenticels often somewhat elongated laterally.
Flowers (5) 7–14 (20) in a ± elongated raceme, simple or very rarely branched at the base, with rhachis up to 20 mm. long, rarely pseudumbellate; pedicels 1·3–3·5 (4·1) cm. long in fruit, articulated in the lower 1/6 or at the base, glabrous or rarely papillose-puberulous.
Understorey tree or shrub, up to 8 m high. Leaves borne in a horizontal plane, appearing almost digitate on ends of branchlets, acute basally, attenuate-acuminate distally. Flowers in 6-10-flowered racemes. Flowers pale to bright yellow.
Drupelets (8) 9–12 (14) × (5) 6–7 (9) mm., ± flattened-cylindric, rarely ovoid or subglobose, inserted at or near the base; embryo straight.
Sepals 6–9 mm. long in flower, oblong-elliptic, rounded, becoming pinkish-red to deep-red, 9–15 (18) mm. long, flat and spreading in fruit.
Carpels 5 (6), with styles completely united (or very rarely slightly free at the apex); stigma 5 (6)-lobed or subglobose.
Stamens with anthers (1) 1·5–2 mm. long, c. 1/2 as long as the filaments, straight, dehiscing by longitudinal slits.
Petals pale to bright yellow, (8) 10–12 × 3–6 mm., obovate, narrowed to a short claw.
