Evergreen tree 25–30 m tall; trunk 30–60 cm diameter with smooth grey or brown bark and longitudinal fissures, crown pyramidal or oblong; ultimate branchlets 5–7 mm, reddish brown, with brown stellate hairs when young; bud-scales caducous, subulate, ± 9 mm long, 1 mm wide, apical bud thickly golden brown felty-tomentose. Leaf-blade entire, oblong 7.5–25 cm long, 4–13 cm wide or ± orbicular in outline and digitately 3(–5)-lobed, 12–32 cm long, 13–30(–40) cm wide, divided for 2/3, the lateral lobes shorter, apex acuminate, acumen up to 1.7 cm, base rounded (subcordate in juvenile leaves), papery, glabrous above and below; petiole red, terete, 4–9 cm long, 1.5 mm wide, with brown tomentum when young; stipules caducous. Inflorescences 4–5 per stem, borne amongst the leaves, paniculate, 3.5–6 cm long, 2.5–10 cm wide, thickly covered in felty reddish brown hairs, lowest branch 0.7–1.6 cm from the base, 0.7–1 cm long, bearing 2–3 partial peduncle, each 1–2 mm long, bearing a single flower; bracts caducous, not seen; pedicels 1–2 mm long. Flowers pinkish brown outside, red with whitish pimples inside, perianth campanulate to widely obconical, 12–20 mm long, 14–20 mm wide, divided for ± half its length into 5–6 strap-shaped, reflexed lobes, outside with brown-black, felty tomentum of 5–9-armed stellate hairs, densest at the base of the perianth, inner surface glabrous apart from the involute margins of the lobes. Male flowers with androphore tapering slightly towards the apex, 5–7(–10) mm long, 1 mm wide, puberulous, with inconspicuous, mostly simple white hairs; anthers 8–10, uniseriate, forming a short cylinder 1.2–2 mm long, 3.5–4 mm wide, affixed to the head of the androphore by a glabrous disc; vestigial carpels ± 0.5 mm long, glabrous, largely concealed in a flask-like cavity in the head of the androphore. Female flowers known only from the type, slightly larger than the male, carpels 5 mm long, tomentose. Fruit with five bright red or brown patent follicles, each subglobose and laterally flattened, ± 6≈5≈3 cm, apex subrostrate, stipe 0.3–0.5 cm long, 1 cm wide, glabrous, 3–5-seeded, the seeds embedded in jelly-like pulp; seeds oblong-ellipsoid, ± 2.5 cm long, 1.2 cm wide.
