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A tall evergreen tree. It grows to 30 m tall. It has many branches and is aromatic. The bark is grey-brown. It peels easily. The leaves are oblong and 8-16.5 cm long by 2.8-6.5 cm wide. They are leathery and bluish-green. They have fine hairs underneath. The base tapers and runs into the leaf stalk. The flowers are single and in twisted branched spikes. These are 5.5 cm long by 0,4 cm wide. They are creamy-green in colour. The fruit has 7-24 carpels each one like a pod. They are 6 cm long and form dense clusters. They are green to red in colour and red inside. They are succulent and split when ripe. The seeds are black and 10 mm long. They have a yellow papery seed layer.
Leaves petiolate; lamina (6) 8–16.4 x 2.8–6.5 cm., oblong or elliptic to oblanceolate or ovate, acute to obtuse or usually with an acumen up to 2 cm. long at the apex, cuneate to rounded and decurrent at the base, coriaceous, bluish-green and glabrous above, greenish-brown to orange (usually ± glaucous) and appressed-pubescent or glabrescent below, with nerves and ± densely reticulate venation prominent on both sides; petiole 3–6 mm. long, often blackish, appressed-pubescent or glabrescent.
Petals greenish-white to yellow, the outer ones 2.5–5 x c. 0.5 cm., linear, curved in section above, concave at the base, sericeous-pubescent outside, tomentellous within except at the base, the inner ones somewhat shorter, narrower, flat or quadrangular in section above, concave at the base, tomentellous except at the base.
Fruit on a pedicel 7–12 (22) mm. long; fruiting carpels (5) 16–24 (42), 1.5–6 x 0.5–0.7 cm., 1–8-seeded, cylindric, straight, not apiculate, not or scarcely constricted between the seeds, glabrous, ± smooth, usually diagonally ridged, green or reddish, subsessile.
Flowers solitary or in 2–5-flowered fasciculate or ± condensed cymes, very fragrant; pedicels 4–11 mm. long, appressed-rusty-pubescent; bracteoles 2, reduced.
Sepals 3–5 mm. long, ovate-triangular, obtuse or apiculate to rounded, appressed-pubescent or glabrescent outside, glabrous and blackish within.
Branches red-brown to blackish, smooth or ± rugose, puberulent at first, eventually glabrous; lenticels usually numerous and conspicuous.
Carpels c. 24–32 (42), c. 4 mm. long; ovary cylindric, appressed-pilose, 6–8-ovulate; style c. 3 times as long as the ovary, cylindric.
Seeds 5–7 mm. long, cylindric, orange-red to black, vertical, with yellow papyraceous aril 2–3 mm. long.
Stamens 1–1.5 mm. long, linear; connective-prolongation ± obliquely capitate, papillose or pubescent.
Tree 5.4–30 (45) m. high, erect, with fairly smooth grey-brown bark, sometimes buttressed.
Fruit a cluster of very numerous narrow dark brown carpels.
Greenish-white fragrant flowers
A tree, up to 60 ft. high
