Shrub or tree to 8 m tall; twigs slender or stout, often with finely flaking bark or corky lenticels. Leaves 4-20 cm long and 2.5-10 cm broad, broadly elliptical to lanceolate, apically short acuminate to acute, basally narrowed or rounded, glabrous or with some minute puberulence along the major veins beneath, not more pubescent in the vein axils; petioles 0.5-2 cm long, slender or quite stout; minor leaves mostly present, rotund, 2-5 cm long. Inflorescences subumbellate on a short, to 1.5 cm long, unbranched peduncle usually becoming stout in fruit and bearing lines of closely and evenly spaced large pedicel scars for much of its length; pedicels filiform, to 10 mm long, in fruit becoming quite stout but not greatly elongating. Flowers opposite the leaves but carried along the underside of the horizontal branches well beneath the foliage; calyx almost enclosing the greenish-white bud, the lobes slightly unequal, short deltoid, often puberulent at the tips, and slightly but evidently recurved outwards from the floral axis, splitting at the sinuses as the corolla begins to emerge, developing a constriction at the base of the lobes which in fruit gives the lower part of the calyx a conspicuous bulge or an apparent thickening; corolla white,-drying yellowish to russet brown, 4 mm long, lobed nearly to the base; anthers 1.8-2.8 mm long. Fruits to ca. 1.2 cm across.
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