Evergreen small tree, rarely a shrub, (1.5–)3–10(–25) m tall, with a clean trunk and dense, rounded crown; bark pale grey, rough or smooth with longitudinal striations; ultimate branchlets 1 mm thick, dark brown, with numerous smooth raised lenticels of the same colour; bud-scales caducous. Leaf-blade narrowly elliptic to oblanceolate, sometimes slightly asymmetrical, 4–12 cm long, 1.7–4.7 cm wide, acumen 0.5–1.8 cm long, ± 0.3 cm wide, leathery, 5–7 pairs veins, glabrous above and beneath; petiole terete, 2–5 mm long, 1 mm wide, glabrescent; stipules caducous. Inflorescence in leaf-axils, with fascicles of 1–5 single flowers; bracts 3–4, ± orbicular, the lowest largest, 1.7–2.5 mm long, 2–3 mm across, deeply bilobed, drying with longitudinal ridges, glabrous; pedicel 5–11 mm long, articulated ± midway, puberulous. Flowers whitish, yellowish or pinkish brown, aromatic, 6–9.5 mm across, divided to within 1.5–2 mm of the base, lobes narrowly triangular, (2.5–)3–4 mm long, 1.2–1.5 mm wide, the upper margins reflexed, white, outer surface sparsely brown stellate-hairy, the hairs 0.1–0.2 mm diameter, inner surface minutely papillate. Male flowers with androphore 1.5–2 mm long, 0.2 mm wide, glabrous, anthers 5, uniseriate, forming a ring 1.5–1.8 mm long, 0.4–1.3 mm wide, glabrous. Female flowers as the male, but androphore absent, anthers forming a ring at the base of the ovary; ovary of 3–5 carpels, ± spherical, 1.2–2 mm long, 1.8–2.5 mm wide, stigmas ± 0.5 mm long, reflexed. Fruits with a single carpel developed, obliquely obovoid, ± 25 mm long, 17 mm wide, stipe indistinct, rostrum absent, orange, subglabrous.
