Graceful tree to 25 m high, with a spreading crown; spinescent short shoots becoming rare??; stems not scabrid; new shoots with an indumentum of short-armed, short-based, ribbony T-shaped hairs, clear or golden. Cotyledons two, opposite, narrow elliptic, just petiolate. Seedling and later leaves with slender spinescent short shoots from the first node; elliptic 15–28 mm long, 3–8 mm wide, adaxial surface glabrous, glossy, light yellow-green, white pellucid spots evident; abaxial surface glabrous, purple; petiole to 3 mm long, densely hairy. Adult leaves mainly alternate, 2-ranked; lamina elliptic, 22–35 mm long, 11–18 mm wide, attenuate; petiole 1–2 mm long, grooved, folded, winged to base. Inflorescences mostly solitary cream, aromatic, tiny, unisexual or possibly bisexual flowers with parts in fives regularly placed around the pistil; almost sessile; bractal involucre present, hairy, caducous. Sepals variable, either linear, 2–3 mm long (male flowers), or petaloid, to 6 mm long (female flowers), or sometimes combinations of these shapes, always free with apices recurved. Petals 5–6 mm long, almost linear, cohering in a tube and then recurved, salverform; white. Male flowers: with stamens exserted at anthesis; filaments 3–4 mm long, adnate to petal joins; anthers ovoid, 1–2 mm long; dehiscing golden pollen through apical slits. Pistil with a very slender ovary on a slender gynophore; minimal stigmatic development. Female flowers with staminodes of about equal height not reaching the level of the stigma; anthers shrivelled, brown, narrow sagittate with a large basal sinus. Pistil with a less stipitate, and more turgid ovary, style stout and the same length as ovary with a bilobed stigma. Possibly bisexual flowers have anthers at three different heights (1+2+2: see Marianthus), the larger stamens with some pollen (viability not tested), the pistil is less stipitate, the ovary is clearly differentiated from the style and the stigma are bilobed. Fruits are indehiscent, globose, 7–10 mm diam., pericarp black, olive green inner; two placentas are thin ribbony, as are funicles; similar chocolate/resinous smell to P. viscidum. Seeds 12–14 per fruit, 4 mm long, 2 mm diam., immersed in a white viscid liquid.
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