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A small or medium sized tree. It grows up to 13 m high. The trunk is straight. The bark is smooth and green or yellow, and powdery. The small branches are stout and smooth and also powdery. They are often twisted and hang downwards. The leaves are simple and occur in opposite pairs. They are widely spaced apart. They have short leaf stalks. They are oval and 3-15 cm long by 2-9 cm wide. The leaves are wedge shaped at the base and leathery. They tend to be wider at the rounded tip. They can have fine hairs underneath. The veins are fine and net like. The flowers are green or yellow and in the axils of leaves. They are 8 mm long. Mostly 2-4 flowers occur in stalked clusters. Fruit are round and 6-10 cm across. They have a hard peel. They are bluish-green when young and turn yellow or orange when ripe. There are many seeds imbedded in a yellow pulp. The seeds are 4 sided and yellow. They are 1.5 cm across and very hard. The ripe fruit pulp is edible.
Leaves: petiole often short, glabrous or pubescent, 2–7 mm. long; lamina mat or dull, glaucous, and with mostly pale green reticulate veins on both sides, beneath slightly paler, coriaceous (living and dry) or papyraceous (dry), elliptic, narrowly elliptic, obovate, or narrowly obovate, (1)1·5–3(3·5) x as long as wide, (2)4–10(20) x (1)2–7(13·5) cm., rounded (or in sucker shoots often acute) at the apex, cuneate or less often rounded at the base, glabrous or pubescent on both sides; one or two pairs of distinct secondary veins from or from above the base curved along the margin and often a faint submarginal pair; tertiary venation reticulate and distinctly prominent on both sides.
Corolla in the mature bud 2·2–4 x as long as the calyx and (6)6·5–9(10·5) mm. long, creamy or greenish–yellow, glabrous outside, inside with a brush–like ring of white lanate hairs in the throat and just on the bae of the lobes; tube cylindrical or nearly so, 1·6–2·5 x as long as the calyx, 1–1·7 x as long as the lobes, (3)3·5–5·5(6) mm. long, 1·5–2·5(3) mm., wide at the throat; lobes thick, narrowly triangular 1·7–2·3 x as long as wide, 3–4(4·5) x 1·3–2(2·3) mm., acute or subacute, spreading.
Fruit orange or yellow, nearly mature bluish–green, large, hard, globose, (2·5)4–7·5(9·5) cm. in diam., with (3–8–50 seeds, with somewhat granular skin, slightly shining. Wall thick, 2·5–5(6) mm. thick, thicker above the pedicel, brittle in mature fruits, hard and not broken by hand when nearly mature and/or dry. Pulp orange, edible.
Pistil hirto–pilose in the middle, (4)5–7·5 mm. long; ovary narrowly ovoid or oblong, 1·5–3 x 1–1·5 mm., hirto–pilose at the very apex, further glabrous, often with a disk–like base, 2–celled; style thick, (2)3–4·5 mm. long, at the base hairy like the ovary at the apex; stigma capitate.
Sepals pale green, free, subequal, the inner slightly smaller, ovate, broadly ovate, or suborbicular, 0·8–1·5 x as long as wide, 1·7–3·5 x 1·5–2·5 mm., rounded at the apex, ciliate, glabrous or pubescent outside, glabrous inside, without colleters.
Seeds pale ochraceous, flattened or not, often more or less plano–convex, obliquely ovate, elliptic or tetrahedral, usually irregularly curved, 1–1·5 x as long as wide, 17–21 x 13–20 x 5–8 mm., with thick very short erect hairs, rather rough.
Inflorescences axillary or ramiflorous, usually several together, very short and nearly fasciculate, 1 x 1–1·5 x 1·5 cm., few–flowered. Peduncle, branches, and pedicels short or very short.
Stamens hardly exserted; filaments extremely short, glabrous, inserted at the mouth of the corolla tube; anthers oblong, about twice as long as wide, 1·2–2 x 0·6–1 mm., glabrous.
Bark pale grey, grey brown, or sometimes dark grey–brown, smooth, somewhat powdery, flaking in small rounded or square scales near base of trunk; wood hard, pale yellowish.
Branches pale grey–brown, powdery or not, lenticellate or not, not sulcate, terete; branchlets glabrous or pubescent.
Deciduous shrub or small often much branched tree, 2–12(18) m. high.
Trunk 7–40 cm. in diam., branched from low down.
In each cell (14)18–30 ovules.
Flowers 4–merous.
