Deciduous tree 10–35 m tall, with spreading crown; bole usually long and straight, sometimes with small, short buttresses; bark thick, rough, grey or brown, with deep or slight vertical fissures; slash fibrous, pink to red or mottled yellow, reticulated, turning darker; no exudate recorded; ultimate branchlets 5–8 mm thick, densely rusty tomentose with stellate hairs 0.2–0.5 mm across; bud-scales soon falling, triangular, ± 8 mm long, 8 mm wide, rusty tomentose. Leaf-blade ovate, 15–37(–60) cm long, 10–32(–45) cm wide, apex rounded, base cordate, the internal angle obtuse, ± 120°, rarely truncate, leathery, digitately 5–11-nerved, drying brown or greenish brown above, mature leaves glossy, glabrous, white and densely tomentose beneath; leaf-blades of immature plants larger, ± 45 cm long, 45 cm wide, 3–5-lobed, divided for up to 1/4, subglabrous; petiole terete, 3.5–22 cm long, 0.2–0.35 cm thick, slightly swollen at base and apex, rusty tomentose when young; stipules caducous. Inflorescences borne with the leaves (often on short spur shoots that only produce leaves after flowering), 2–4 per stem, 3–12 cm long, 2–5 cm wide, densely rusty tomentose with stellate hairs; bracts triangular, 1.5–2 mm long; ± 5 branches from the main axis, lowest branch 0.4–3.5 cm long, with 2–4, 1–3-flowered partial peduncle; pedicels ± 1.5 mm. Flowers with perianth white becoming pink, sweetly scented, campanulate, 7–8 mm long, 5.5–10 mm across divided for 1/3 or more into 5 acute, reflexed lobes 2.5–3.5 mm long, 2 mm wide, the margin conspicuously involute; outer surface densely reddish tomentose with minute 8–13-armed stellate hairs, inner surface glabrous in the lower 2.5–3 mm, the upper parts thickly white tomentose with 5–7-armed sinuous stellate hairs. Male flowers with androphore 0.7–0.8 mm long, 0.7 mm wide at the base, tapering strongly to the apex, glabrous, but surrounded at the base by long stellate hairs, anther thecae in 2 distinct whorls of 5–7, forming a cylinder 1.5 mm high, 1.5 mm wide, the upper thecae with stellate hairs; vestigial ovary 0.3 mm long, glabrous. Female flowers unknown. Fruit with follicles obliquely ovoid-ellipsoid, ± 20 cm long, 17 cm high, 6 cm wide, rostrum short and stout, ± 0.7 cm long, stipe absent, thickly covered in minute rusty stellate hairs; seeds oblong-ellipsoid ± 3.5 cm long, 2 cm wide, sessile.
