Glabrous shrub with few slender branches, up to 3 m high. Leaves clustered near the ends of the branches; petiole up to 22 cm, usually shorter, 2-3.5 mm wide, narrowly channelled above, with a sheathing base prolonged as a membranous stipular ligule up to 4 cm or longer and with fimbriate or +-entire crests encircling the lower part of the petiole; blade up to 30 cm ø (usually 20 cm or less) very deeply 5-11-lobed, or with distinct digitately arranged leaflets, the lobes or leaflets linear-lanceolate to lanceolate-obovate, entire or irregularly pinnatifid with narrow finely-tapering lobes, base gradually narrowed, apex narrowly caudate, margin serrate; leaves below the inflorescence sometimes reduced to a single leaflet. Inflorescence terminal hemispherical, c. 12-20 cm ø; peduncle 1 cm or less, with caducous lanceolate bracts mostly clustered below the primary rays, 1-2 cm long; primary rays rather few, spaced, 2.5-6 cm long, slender, bearing two caducous lanceolate bracts at the apex, up to 1.5 cm long, each ray ending in three branches; the central branch c. 4-6 mm long bearing a whorl of lanceolate caducous bracts and an umbel of c. 7-12 sterile, globose or ovoid bacciform flowers (c. 7 mm ø when dry) with pedicels c. 5 mm long and 6-9-celled; the two lateral branches c. 3-4 cm long at anthesis, articulated about the middle, terminating in a small head of 10-20 sessile or subsessile flowers. Calyx rim obsolete; corolla splitting into c. 4 irregular lobes above, tubular below, c. 2.5 mm long. Stamens 10-14, exserted, 3 mm long, anthers small. Ovary cylindric, c. 2 mm long, 10-16-celled; disk with a central raised boss formed by the pustulate stigmas. Fruit globose, fleshy (ribbed when dry), c. 10 mm ø.
Primary forest, along creeks and river banks, flood-resistant, from near sea-level to 850 m.
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