Evergreen, softly simple-pubescent shrub, sometimes with adventitious roots. Leaves alternate, entire, conduplicate when young, petiolate; stipules free or shortly connate at base between the petiole and stem, broad, ± persistent; lamina discolorous, margin flat. Inflorescences mostly terminal, comprising small, loose, few-flowered, cymose panicles; bracts persistent. Flowers bisexual, 5-partite, cream, long-pedicellate, the pedicels elongating significantly in fruit. Hypanthium shortly tubular, funnel-shaped. Sepals erect to spreading, persistent on fruits. Petals erect, cucullate, clawed, smooth; claw adnate to base of stamen filament for part of its length. Stamens enclosed in and subequal to the petals, erect to incurved. Disc forming a narrow, undulate ring around the ovary summit, free, glabrous, smooth, becoming circular in fruit. Ovary at anthesis inferior, carpels 3; style virtually entire, glabrous, slightly papillose for most of its length, stigma with 3 minute lobes. Fruit an obovoid schizocarpic capsule, c. half-inferior or largely inferior; fruitlets crustaceous, with a crystal layer between the fruitlets, splitting longitudinally along their inner surface and over the summit to release the seed. Seed uniformly coloured above a darkened base; aril basal, moderately large, translucent.
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