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A small glabrous evergreen tree up to 12 m high, usually much less, branching from c. 0.5 m above the base; crown open rounded; bole usually less than 1 m in diameter, ± irregular; bark smooth at first, or flaking, later rough, grey, dark brown or black, deeply quadrately fissured to show reddish underbark, and exuding a gummy red “varnish”; young twigs fairly slender.
A small to medium sized tree. It grows to 10 m high. The bark is dark grey, rough and cracked. The leaves are narrowly oval and 5-16 cm long by 1.5-4.5 cm wide. They are shiny green above. The flowers are creamy-green and small. The fruit are oval and 2 cm long. They have 12 faint ribs. The fruit are red when ripe. The fruit are edible.
Male flowers with a sweet, musky scent; calyx c. 1 mm long, obconic, 5-lobed, the lobes irregularly lobulate, glabrous or pubescent, white; stamens 4–5, filaments 1.5 mm long, creamy-white, anthers 0.7 mm long, pale yellow; pistillode 1 mm high, infundibuliform, irregularly lobed, pubescent without, glabrous within.
Female flower: calyx 4 mm in diameter, shallowly cupular, 6-lobed, the lobes truncate; staminodes rarely present; ovary 5 × 4 mm, ovoid-subglobose, 3-locular; styles 3, 4–5 mm long, flabelliform, laciniate, flattened, adaxially minutely granulate, abaxially smooth, ochreous.
Fruits 1.6–2 × 1.4–1.5 cm when fresh (1.4–1.6 × 1–1.3 cm when dried), ovoid-ellipsoid, shallowly longitudinally 12-ribbed, pale green at first, later becoming reddish-green or brownish. Pyrenes 3, 1–1.5 cm × 7–9 mm, carinate, apiculate, the lateral lobes smooth, entire.
Male peduncles 0.7–1.5(2) cm long; inflorescence bracts 7–10, 5–10 × 3–7 mm, elliptic-obovate, rounded, yellow-green, cream-coloured or whitish; head c. 5 mm in diameter.
Stipules c. 1 mm long, triangular, soon falling, or not developed.
Leaves long-petiolate, the petioles (1)1.5–6 cm long.
Inflorescences usually borne among the leaves.
Female peduncles and bracts ± as in the male.
