Shrub or tree to 7 m tall; twigs and young branches greenish or yellowish, often slightly angled or longitudinally striate. Leaves 10-15 cm long and 3-5 cm wide, elliptical to lanceolate, mostly widest at or below the middle, acuminate at both ends, glabrate but whitish-pilose at the vein axils beneath and with a few hairs scattered on the lamina or near the veins; petioles 1-2 cm long; minor leaves 1/2 to almost as long as the majors and of similar shape and pubescence. In-f lorescences mostly near the ends of the branches, subumbellate on a short, slender unbranched peduncle, the cicatrix mostly contracted and short; pedicels filiform, ca. 1 cm long in fruit elongating and thickening somewhat, not becoming stout and rigid but evenly thickening toward the apex. Flowers with the calyx truncate in bud with umbo-like lobes, usually splitting at the sutures when the corolla has emerged, bearing long, whitish, simple apical hairs, sometimes densely pilose but glabrous basally, in fruit glabrescent, not enlarged and the margins becoming irregular and misshapen; corolla white, often drying with a purplish hue, 5 mm long, lobed about %/3 the way down; anthers ellipsoid, at least twice as long as broad, ca. 3 mm long. Fruits to 1.3 cm across, ripening ?yellow, mostly holding their shape in the press.
Secondary forest, often in dense stands; at levels up to 2,500 metres. Damp or wet forests or thickets, sometimes in oak-pine forests or wet pine forests, usually at elevations from 1,000-2,500 metres or sometimes lower.
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