Erect softly woody shrub or small tree 1–8(–10) m high, with foul smell; stems rather thick and succulent, green, with prominent persistent leaf-scars, branching in a dichotomous manner (like frangipani) to form a rounded crown; trunk up to 15 cm in diameter and with thin, smooth greyish or greenish bark.. Leaves crowded towards the apices of the branches, slightly succulent, obovate, oblanceolate, or elliptic, 10–55 cm long, 2–16 cm wide, attenuate into an exauriculate petioloid base, margins shallowly to prominently sinuate-serrate or sinuate-laciniate, apex acute, acuminate-apiculate, glabrous or pubescent to thinly floccose especially on main veins above, paler and glabrous to floccose or tomentose beneath; sometimes the lower midrib purplish.. Capitula discoid, very numerous in large thyrses of ± congested subumbelliform corymbs; stalks of individual capitula glabrous or shortly pubescent; scented; involucre cylindrical, 4–7.5 mm long, 1.5–2 mm in diameter; bracts of calyculus 3–4, lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, pubescent at least on the margins, 1–3 mm long; phyllaries 5–8, green, sometimes with purple tips, 3.5–7 mm long, glabrous or thinly pubescent.. Ray florets absent; disc florets yellow, less often orange or white, corolla 4.5–8.5 mm long, tube expanded above the middle, glabrous or shortly hairy in upper part, lobes 0.7–2 mm long.. Achenes 2–3.5 mm long, ribbed, shortly hairy in the grooves; pappus 3.5–8.5 mm long.. Fig. 138 (page 679).
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