Much-branched, evergreen shrubs or trees up to 16 m high, branches usually horiÂzontal ending in densely leafy ultimate twigs; twigs slender, pubescent when young, buds and inflorescence buds protected by hard brown ciliate scales. Leaves usually borne in one plane, hence seeming distichous, glossy, dark green, elliptic, lanceolate-elliptic, ovate-elliptic or ovate, 1-3-6 cm long and 0-5-2 cm wide, young petioles midrib and margins hairy but soon becoming glabrous. Flowers dioecious. Male flowers white, axillary, solitary or in 2-3-flowered cymes; pedicels almost glabrous. Calyx 2-3 mm long, glabrous except for the margin, cup-shaped, truncate or minutely 3-lobed. Corolla deeply 3-lobed, 5 mm long, silvery-sericeous outside; lobes 2-5 mm long, spreading, acute, apiculate or rounded. Stamens about 17, 2 mm long. Ovary absent. Female flowers white, solitary, similar to the males. Staminodes 6-9, about 1 mm long. Ovary 3-locular with 2 ovules in each cell, glabrous, style as long as ovary, glabrous, shallowly trilobed. Disc somewhat fleshy, saucer-shaped, clasping base of ovary (see fig. 00). Fruit acorn-shaped, obovoid, apiculate, clasped at the base by the cup-shaped, slightly accrescent calyx. Seed usually 1, grey, with a finely rugose testa, obovoid to ellipsoid, apiculate, circumvented by an oblique, thin more or less straight line; endosperm white, horny or bony, opaque, not ruminate. Fig. 9:1.