Shrub or small tree, rarely up to 30 m high and 60 cm ø. Twigs glabrous. Leaves glabrous, or rarely sparsely fine-hairy on midrib and nerves beneath, often the upper surface dark coloured to nearly black when dry and the undersurface olive brown, ± elliptic, with cuneate-attenuate base, crenate margin and mostly abruptly acuminate apex, 5½-15 by 2¼-6 cm; nerves 6-9 pairs, usually meeting in the intramarginal reticulation; petiole 3-15 mm. Raceme often basally branched, axis fine-hairy to appressedly pubescent, 3-12 cm. Bracts and bracteoles soon caducous, 2-3(-4 in Morotai) and c. 1½ (or 2-2½ in Morotai) mm long respectively. Pedicels with same indument as axis, 1-5 mm. Calyx glabrous, 1½-2½(-1 in Morotai) mm; lobes ciliate, when young l-1½ mm, becoming longer by tearing apart. Corolla 4-6 mm. Stamens 40-c. 60. Disk glabrous, with some hairs or pilose, especially after anthesis. Ovary glabrous, c. 1 mm high; style glabrous,4-5 mm.Fruit orbicular, pink, green, yellow or dark blue (sec. coll.), 4-10(-20) by 3-8(-15)mm; stone smooth, cells 3, but usually only 1 fertile, the sterile cells larger than the fertile ones, towards the base filled with air. Seed and embryo U-shaped.
Usually in coastal, primary and secondary lowland forests especially in the transition zone between mangrove (Nypa) and freshwater swamps, mostly in deep marshy, sandy soils, but in a variety of other habitats: sandy beaches, sandbanks near the sea, kerangas, Casuarina peat swamp, in lalang fields on white sandy soils, open heath forest behind the mangrove, in Shorea laevifolia forest (Nunukan), on a dry bamboo ridge at 300 m, also on red or yellow sandy loams, exceptionally as high as 750 m, and even 1900 m. Fl. March-May (June-Jan.); fr. June-Aug. (Sept.-Jan.). Flowers are noted to be fragrant. The fruits are obviously buoyant, the sterile cells being filled with air.
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