A large perennial with a woody stem scrambling over bushes, trees and rocks, ultimate branches hanging, or a tree reaching 40 ft. in height (Scott Elliot), branchlets smooth, reddish-brown, glabrous or puberulous. Leaves ovate or rotund-ovate, abruptly acuminate, base blunt, truncate or subcordate, margin crenulate but generally entire near the base, with 3 to 5 ascending lateral nerves on each side above the 3-nerved base, connecting veins numerous, subparallel, conspicuous on the lower face, 2 1/2–6 1/2 in. long, 1 1/2–5 in. wide, upper face glabrous, and when dry closely dotted with cystoliths, lower face glabrate or sparsely puberulous or shortly hairy on the midrib and nerves, cystoliths shortly linear; petiole shorter than the leaf. United stipules broadly triangular-lanceolate, shortly hairy on the edges and nerves, soon falling. Flowers diœcious. Male inflorescence shorter or sometimes longer than the petiole, rather laxly flowered, the short peduncle and spreading branches puberulous, flowers stalked, pedicel about 1 lin. long, perianth-segments 4, minutely puberulous. Female inflorescence similar to the male but the spreading branches shorter; flowers sessile in clusters at the ends of the short branchlets; perianth with 2 larger elliptic inner lateral lobes equal to the ovary, and two minute outer lobes; stigma roundish, densely and shortly penicillate. Achene slightly obliquely ovate, compressed, pale brown with dark brown spots, about equal to the somewhat ventricose lateral perianth-lobes, the surface of which is minutely granular.
