Tree or rarely a shrub, up to 7 m high, usually with well-trimmed round or flattened crown. Branches sometimes drooping when young becoming stiff, usually not spinescent. Leaves usually fascicled rarely alternate to subopposite; lamina oblanceolate, elliptic or linear, usually obtuse or abruptly tapering at the apex, mucronulate, usually broadly cuneate at the base, 1 • 5—5(—8) cm long, 0-3-2-5 cm broad, coriaceous, grey-green, secondary veins hardly visible on both sides, pubescent or glabrous; petiole 0-2-1 cm long, usually pubescent. Sclereids in the mesophyll with poorly differentiated foot, bent or often of irregular shape, rarely reaching the middle of the leaf, often in clusters, usually similarly well developed on both sides of the leaf. Inflorescence axillary, racemose, often with flowers fascicled or almost so; pedicel 0-4-1 cm long, pubescent or glabrous. Bracts setaceous, sometimes trifid, usually pubescent. Sepals elliptic to ovate, 2-3 mm long, pubescent particularly on the margin. Corona a fleshy -ring, denticulate. Stamens 6-15; filaments 3-5 mm long, glabrous. Gynophore 2-3 mm long, glabrous. Ovary ovoid with 8 ovules, with indistinct stigma on style c. 1 mm long. Berry spherical or almost so, 0-5-1-2 cm in diameter, smooth, glabrous, yellow, with 1 or 2 seeds with colliculate surface. Fig. 20 : 2.
