Shrub or small tree 0.6–6 m tall, the main trunk with almost black bark or rough grey bark, which peels to expose a reddish undersurface; shoots usually rather stout with thick often powdery very white-grey or straw-coloured wrinkled corky bark; sap copious, sometimes apparently milky.Leaves mostly restricted to apices of branches; blades 3–27.5 × 1.7–15.5 cm, oblong-elliptic to oblong or sometimes round, obtuse or acute at the apex or sometimes tapering-acute, cuneate to rounded at the base, rather fleshy or coriaceous or sometimes papery, often drying yellow-green and mostly markedly paler and glaucous beneath, glabrous or occasionally densely velvety tomentose on lower surface; lateral nerves in 5–7 main pairs; tertiary nerves finely reticulate, sometimes drying pale yellowish above and dark beneath; domatia present as tufts of hair; petioles 3–25 mm long; stipules with broad basal part 3.5–5 mm long and subulate apex 1.5–7.5 mm long, pubescent within.Flowers 5-merous, borne in axillary many-flowered divaricate cymes, all parts of inflorescence mostly pubescent and sometimes densely woolly tomentose; peduncle 10–50 mm long; pedicels 1–3 mm long; bracts 3–5 mm long, linear.Calyx tube 1.5–2 mm long, obconic, glabrous or sometimes pubescent; limb-tube short, 1–3 mm long, almost truncate or undulate or with short triangular teeth about 0.5–1 mm long.Corolla greenish-yellow, fleshy, thick, wrinkled when dry; tube 2.5–4.5 mm long, pilose at throat and with a ring of deflexed hairs one third of the way from the top; lobes 3 mm long, narrowly triangular.Pollen presenter distinctly exserted, green, 2 mm long, ellipsoid, ridged.Fruit green mottled brown, yellow or dull red or brown spotted white, fleshy and edible, 22–30 × 26–37 mm (probably at least 35–40 mm wide in life), depressed globose, lenticellate.Pyrenes 18–22 × 11–17 × 11–15 mm, ellipsoid; the walls ridged, exceedingly thick and woody, up to 5–7 mm thick, with a deep lateral semicircular groove on either side above the point of attachment, meeting on the apical edge.
