Treelet or tree, (2-)5-25 m tall, 4-50 cm ø, glabrous or innovations and inflorescences short-hairy or with small brown scales; branchlets rather sturdy; blaze and wood mostly orange brown. Leaves pseudo-opposite to pseudo-verticillate (3-7 leaves), coriaceous, dentate, elliptic to lanceolate or oblanceolate to obovate, rounded to acuminate at apex, distinctly nerved and veined, venation above sometimes shallowly sulcate, underneath pale or whitish green in vivo, 2 ½-19 by 1 ½-7 cm; petiole ½-3 cm. Racemes terminal and axillary or on short shoots, 1 ½-11 cm at base mostly bracteate; bracts 4-10 by 3-5 mm, ciliate. Flowers white. Pedicels 3-15 mm, in fruit up to 20 mm. Sepals convex to hooded, the outer ± saccate at base, midrib elevated. Petals 0. Stamens 8-13, close together, thick, ± triangular in CS, the connective dark brown, occasionally with 1-3 flimsy appendages adhering to the stamen-globe, later the stamens spreading. Ovary fusiform, thick, 2 mm; stigma sessile, slightly bilobed, cap-shaped, appressed, both with impressions from the stamens. Fruit broad-ellipsoid or obovoid, rarely oblique, very rarely with a stipe-like base, 1 ½-2 ½ by ¾-1 ¾ cm, via red finally black. Seeds 1-2, broadly ellipsoid, (if 2) plano-convex, smooth or ribbed (lobed in CS); stigmatic cap 3-4 mm ø.
A subsidiary small tree in primary mixed montane forest, or mossy forest, often associated with Nothofagus, Quintinia, Elaeocarpus, Myrtaceae and Libocedrus, also in old secondary forest, sometimes fire-induced; (500-)800-3000(-3300) m, rather common. Fl. June-Jan.; fr. Jan.-Dec, not seldom fl, and fr. together; c. 130 collections.
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