Large shrub or tree 4.5–12 m tall; bole often buttressed at the base; bark grey-purple, rough, flaking to leave pale patches; slash meat-red with paler streaks, watery, with white gum; ultimate branchlets yellowish brown tomentose to tomentellous, 3–7 mm wide, at length becoming ridged, rough, grey and exfoliating; bud-scales triangular, 2–2.5 mm long, 1.5–1.8 mm wide, tomentellous. Leaf-blade ± orbicular in outline, 3–5-lobed, 8.5–17 cm long, 8.5–17.5 cm wide, lobes subequal, wide, 4–7 cm long, 7–9 cm wide, apices acuminate, ± 3 cm long, 0.2 cm wide, base cordate, sinus 3–5 cm deep, edges overlapping, tomentellous above, densely yellow-brown tomentose with 6–8-armed pale stellate hairs below; petiole terete, 8–12 cm long, 2–3 mm wide, densely yellow-brown tomentellous; stipules caducous. Inflorescences borne 5–8 at the apex of leafless stems, 4–8.5 cm long, 2–4 cm wide, yellow-brown, tomentellous and densely stellate-hairy, with 3–10 lateral branches, lowest branch 3–9 mm from the base, 15–35 mm long, bearing 1–4 partial peduncles, each 1–3-flowered. Flowers with perianth green outside, red inside, widely campanulate, 9.5–13 mm long, 11–16 mm wide, divided into 5 oblong acute lobes, 5–9 mm long, 3–4 mm wide, outside velutinous, densely covered with short yellow-brown (when dried) stellate hairs which completely obscure the epidermis, inside glabrous apart from the upper 2/3–3/4 of the lobes which more sparsely covered in patent white, simple hairs. Fruit with follicles ± ellipsoid, 7–12 cm long, 2–3 cm wide, nearly dehiscing flat, then slightly shorter, 4.5–8 cm wide, rostrum long, stout, straight or curved, 1–3 cm long, stipe short and stout, 0.2–0.5 cm long, pericarp woody, 2–4 mm thick, outer surface brown, tomentellous, inner surface yellow, drying dull orange, softly tomentose except the placenta which is covered in urticating yellow hairs ± 2 mm long; seeds with stout, peg-like stalks 2–3 mm long, persisting on old fruits; seeds ellipsoid, 11–12 mm long, 7–8 mm wide, grey-black, hilum sub-apical, round, 1 mm wide, at the margin of the aril; aril large, rounded, apical, 5 mm wide, 2 mm high, red, drying orange or red. Fig. 2, p. 15.
