Tree 6–18 m. tall, with ascending branches and rounded crown; bark grey-brown, usually rough, flaking. Young branchlets golden-brown or rusty tomentellous, sometimes (particularly in West Africa) floccose-tomentose; older branchlets rather thickened, corky and much scarred, glabrescent. Leaves mostly aggregated near the branch-tips, ± 25–45 cm. long; stipules oblong-acuminate to linear-lanceolate, 6–12 mm. long, caducous; lateral leaflets (5–)6–8 on either side, mostly oblong-lanceolate to oblong-ovate, sometimes ovate, up to 5–13 cm. long, 3.5–6(–9) cm. wide, the lower ones often relatively small, bluntly pointed to shortly rounded at apex, rounded to cordate and unequal-sided at base, with the margins slightly recurved on the older leaflets, covered with a golden or silvery silky indumentum at first, becoming shortly pubescent and ultimately glabrescent above, ± discolorous and coriaceous, with ± 6–10 laxly inserted curved-ascending primary lateral nerves prominulous beneath, a lax tertiary venation and fine ultimate vein-reticulum. Panicles with laxly inserted spreading branches, ± 7–18(–22) cm. long, rusty tomentellous to floccose-tomentose; bracts lanceolate, 1–2 mm. long; bracteoles inserted at top of the 2–5 mm. long pedicel, minute. Calyx 4–5 mm. long, tomentellous. Corolla 13–15 mm. long, white or greenish-white, sometimes marked darker at base of petals. Fruits linear-oblong, ± 9–18(–30) cm. long, 3–4(–4.5) cm. wide, glabrescent, 1–3(–5)-seeded, sometimes replaced by ± 1.5–2 cm. long hard subglobose-ellipsoid galls. Fig. 18.
