Usually evergreen tree 30–45(–50) m high with an irregular, sometimes open crown; trunk up to 1.2 m in diameter, sometimes buttressed and usually very deeply fluted; bark smooth to irregularly rough and warty, yellowish to light brown, sometimes with scattered small black spheres of hardened resinous exudate; branchlets frequently from swollen nodes, often deciduous leaving a conical pit, glabrous or puberulous and glabrescent, yellowish-green occasionally becoming blackened. Spines borne at a wide angle on the trunk and branches, up to 15 cm long and 9 mm diameter at the base, without leaves or flowers, forked or branching several times, the branch-spines subtended by scale-leaves when young; spines on flowering and some sterile branchlets infrequent, usually simple and short, up to 1(–2) cm long borne 5–12 mm above the axil; spinules absent. Leaves on sterile and fertile branchlets, usually persistent; stipules narrowly triangular, 0.2–0.5 mm long, soon caducous; petiole 1–3.1 cm long; petiolules 0.3–1.8 cm long; leaflets ovate to ovate-elliptic with the inner half often slightly smaller than the outer, 5.8–11.5 cm long, 2.7–7.5 cm wide, acute to acuminate, often developing a drip-tip 1.5–3 cm long on sterile shoots, more or less equally rounded or abruptly cuneate, the two sides sometimes joining the petiole 1–2 mm apart, membranous, eventually coriaceous; venation often prominent, glabrous, but sparsely puberulous on the main vein beneath at first; foliole 0.3–3(–14) mm long, sometimes early caducous. Inflorescence 2–5(–8)-flowered, subfasciculate or condensed, often an umbellate cyme, 0.5–1 cm from the leaf-axil on stems of the current year, or several on an axillary, usually leafless shoot, grey-puberulous to tomentellous; peduncle absent or up to 18 mm long. Flowers 5-merous; sepals elliptic to ovate, remaining concave, 3–6 mm long, 1.5–3.7 mm wide, acute, usually caducous as the bud opens, shortly grey-puberulous to tomentellous outside, the glabrous margin narrow; petals pale yellowish green, oblong-elliptic to oblanceolate, becoming reflexed at anthesis, 6–10 mm long, 1.5–2.5 mm wide, acute, the glabrous tip sometimes slightly contorted, villous within; stamens 10, spreading-erect; anthers 1–1.5 mm long, 0.5–1 mm wide; ovary 1–2 mm high, densely white- to grey-hairy; style1–1.5 mm long.Fruit only one developing from an inflorescence, soon elongating in early development, brown to yellow at maturity, ovoid or ellipsoid to broadly fusiform, (6.5–)8–12 cm long, (3.5–)5.8–7 cm wide, tapering to obtuse ends, glabrous and dark, pulpy, oily and malodorous within; seed loose at maturity, cream, ellipsoid to fusiform, up to 4.3 cm long.
