Unbranched shrubs or small trees 3-10 (15) m tall; bark light brown, smooth. Upper portion of stem furrowed to terete, with hollow pith (sometimes housing ants). Leaves even-pinnate, (simple and elongated in juvenile plants); petiole plus rachis 8-75 cm long; leaflets 10-20, alternate, chartaceous, glabrous, abaxially minutely papillate, oblong, lanceolate, elliptic or oblanceolate, 5-22(30) × 3-6.5(7.3) cm, the base acute to obtuse, the apex acuminate, the margins entire or crenulate. Thyrses panicle-shaped, 30-45 cm long, densely flowered; flowers in compound, pedunculate dichasia. Calyx greenish to light yellow, sericeous-tomentose, the sepals ovate, rounded at apex, ca. 3 mm long; petals yellowish, rhombate, ca. 3.3 mm long. sericeous-tomentose; disc cup-shaped, ca. 1 mm tall, glabrous or puberulent; filaments pubescent. Capsules red, glabrous, stipitate, of two subglobose cocci, one of which is usually smaller or rudimentary, pericarp 1.5-2 mm thick, cocci 1.5-2 cm long, splitting in half along the dorsal suture. Seeds nearly globose to obovoid, black, foveate, ca. 1.7 cm long, with a white, papery arillode on lower third.
Shrubs or trees 3-6 m tall; trunks slender, sometimes clustered; stems terete, weakly striate, densely appressed-puberulent. Leaves paripinnate, 30-70 cm long; petioles terete, 4-10 cm long; rachises terete, glabrous, the epidermis usu-ally with a 1-celled, grayish, sometimes exfoliating layer; petiolules 1-1.5 cm long, marginally ribbed above; leaflets 6-9 pairs, leaflets narrowly oblong to ob-long-oblanceolate, acute to gradually or bluntly acuminate at the apex, acute to attenuate and often inequilateral at the base, (5.5-)10-30(-40) cm long, (1.5-)4.5-7(-10) cain-wide, glabrous, the major lateral veins often arising from the midrib at an angle of 80-90?. Inflorescences terminal panicles, the branches densely strigose, the smaller ones drying angulate. Flowers white; pedicels and