An erect dense evergreen shrub 0-5-2 m high or tree up to 6 m high; trunks up to 30 cm thick with a dark-coloured often almost black bark; branches somewhat spreading; young twigs densely tawny pubescent. Leaves borne in two ranks, alternate, shortly petioled; leaf-blade narrowly elliptic to ovate-oblong, deep green and glossy, glabrous or hairy above, pale dull and hairy below (drying a rich reddish-brown); nerves somewhat prominent to inconspicuous, midrib prominent below, somewhat impressed above; margin entire, fimbriate. Flowers dioecious, female or functionally male, borne in small pseudo-racemes which develop into leafy twigs, pendulous. 5-10 mm long, pentamerous, urceolate with spreading eventually reflexed corolla, creamy white; peduncle 0-5-2 cm long, densely hairy with ferruginous one-celled hairs mixed with many-celled short gland-tipped hairs which also occur on the calyx and bracts; bracts 2, separated by an internode, lanceolate to ovate-cordate, subsessile, often glabrous above and hairy below with the margins fimbriate, early deciduous. Calyx urceolate, densely hairy, shortly 5-lobed at apex of tube. Corolla deeply 5-lobed, campanulate, with lobes reflexed, thinly hairy outside and on inner surface at apex of lobes; lobes about equal to the tube. Ovary conical, hairy with a mixture of one-celled hairs and short glandular many-celled hairs, 4-6-celled with one ovule in each cell. Fruit subglobose, up to 2 cm in diam., glabrescent, red, completely enclosed in the inflated bladder-shaped calyx. Seeds 2-4 per fruit, pale brown, 8 mm long, circumvented by a thin line. Fig. 10: 4.
