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A small to medium sized tree. It grows 4-10 m tall. The crown is rounded. The bark is grey to brown. There are cracks along its length. Young parts of the plant are covered with light brown woolly hairs. The leaves have 5 leaflets. (Sometimes there are 3 or 4). The leaflets are broadly oval and 11 cm long by 6 cm wide. They are bright green and finely hairy. The edges are often thickened and rolled under. The leaf stalk can be 12 cm long. The flowers are white to dark mauve and 6 mm long. They have 2 lips. The lower lip is mauve and upper one white. The occur in small heads made up of a few flowers. They are on a common stalk 7 cm long. The fruit are oval and 1.5-2 cm long. They are black when mature. There is a cup at the base. The fruit are edible.
Leaves (3)5-foliolate; petiole 3–16 cm, terete; petiolules ± absent; leaflets 8–16 × (2)3–9 cm, median leaflet largest, elliptic to obovate, rounded or obtuse at the apex or acute to shortly acuminate, rarely emarginate, cuneate at the base, entire, discolorous especially when young, ± roughly pubescent above, densely floccose beneath, venation impressed above, raised and reticulate beneath under the indumentum.
Fruit an edible shiny glabrous drupe, black at maturity, c. 2–3 × 2 cm, ellipsoid to obovoid, rounded at apex, the lower half enclosed in the enlarged calyx; fruiting calyx cup-shaped, 1–2 cm high, 1.5–2.5 cm wide, broadly crenate, pubescent, not gland-dotted.
Corolla fragrant, 6–7 mm long, gland-dotted, lanate; tube white-blue, mauve or purple, 3–4 mm long, curved, hairy outside; lobes at an obtuse angle to the tube, middle lower lobe mauve or whitish, 2–3 × 2–3 mm, oblong, ovate or ± round, other lobes white.
Shrub or small tree 4–10(13) m tall, with rounded crown; bark light brown to grey-brown, deeply vertically fissured; branches pale hairy becoming glabrous; young branches and twigs densely orange-tawny lanate.
Inflorescences axillary, of few–many-flowered, dense to somewhat lax compound dichasia, 3–18 cm long, orange-tawny tomentose or woolly when young; bracteoles 0.8–2.5 cm long, linear.
Calyx obconical, 5-lobed, gland-dotted, lanate, strongly accrescent in fruit; tube 2.5–3 mm long; lobes 0.5–1 mm long, erect.
Ovary globose, apically rounded, not gland-dotted, lanate at apex; style c. 4 mm long.
Stamens enclosed within the corolla tube; filaments with glandular hairs.
