Trees or rarely shrubs, 2-8 m tall, occasionally taller, with straight, erect stems which are thickly and persistently corky, cork longitudinally fissured. Branchlets often armed or ending in a spine, rather thick, dull grey or brown, pubescent, with the persistent leaf-bases somewhat prominent, platform concave, upturned, the new growth or ultimate twigs brownish, sooty or plum-coloured, tomentulose. Leaves broadly ovate-oblong, oblong-obovate or suborbicular, from about 2-5 cm long and 1 • 5 cm broad to 5 cm long and 4 cm broad, pubescent on both surfaces, sometimes glabrescent, apex broadly rounded or broadly acuminate, retuse or with a minute soft mucro at the apex; base rounded or very broadly cuneate; 5-nerved from the base, the distal pair sometimes very faint. Cymes terminal on the short ultimate branchlets, forming a subglobose head on a short peduncle averaging 5-15 mm long, peduncle and pedicels tomentulose. Calyx 5-lobed almost to the base, pubescent without; lobes erect spreading, long acuminate from a broad base, almost as long as the mature corolla. Corolla greenish, about 4-5 mm long, sparsely puberulous outside, 5-lobed almost to midway; tube glabrous within except for a dense fringe of hairs in the throat. Stamens inserted at the base of the corolla tube, the tops of the anthers reaching the throat of the tube; filaments about as long as the anthers; anthers bearded. Ovary subglobose, more or less pubescent at least in the upper portion, 2-celled (rarely 3-celled at base), ovules numerous in each cell. Fruit dark green, minutely speckled or necked with light green, globose, about 7 cm diam., rind thick woody, flesh champagne coloured; seed bony, compressed, one surface rounded the other flattened with a distinctly hollowed out area in the centre, seed coats thin shrinking with the bony endosperm.
