A deciduous tree up to 33 m high with a spreading crown, borne on stilt roots or with fluted buttresses up to 3 m high.Trunk spiny.Bark smooth or scaly, pinkish-brown.Branches ± flattened.Twigs dark purplish-brown or blackish. Young shoots, petioles and inflorescence axes evenly to sparingly pubescent or ± glabrous.Petioles 5–12 mm long.Stipules very fugacious; scars 3 mm long.Leaf blades 4–17 × 2–11 cm, elliptic-ovate to elliptic-oblong, shortly acutely to obtusely acuminate at the apex, cuneate-rounded to truncate or shallowly cordate at the base, firmly chartaceous to thinly coriaceous, glabrous above with the midrib and lateral nerves sparingly pubescent above, more evenly pubescent beneath, dark green above, paler beneath, often drying blackish above and brownish beneath; lateral nerves in 11–20 pairs, cheilodromous, often branched, scarcely prominent above, prominent beneath, tertiary nerves parallel.Flowers in terminal leafless or almost leafless panicles 3–13 cm long.Male flowers: pedicels 1.5 mm long, glabrous; sepals 2.5 × 1 mm, triangular-lanceolate, acute, glabrous, pale greenish; petals 1 × 0.5 mm, spathulate-flabelliform, tridentate, yellowish-green; disk 2 mm in diameter, annular, verruculose, yellow; staminal column 1.5 mm high; anthers 0.8 mm long; pistillode 0.75 mm high, ampulliform, bifid at the apex, the lobes connivent.Female flowers subsessile or very shortly pedicellate; sepals 2 × 1.5 mm, triangular-ovate, otherwise as in male; petals oblanceolate, otherwise as in male; outer disk similar to that of male; inner disk irregularly 3-lobed, lobes c. 1 × 1 mm, ± triangular, irregularly lobulate at apex; ovary 1 × 1 mm, subglobose, 2-celled; styles 2, 1.3 mm long, united at the base, bifid, stigmas ± smooth.Fruit 9–12 × 5–7 mm, ellipsoid to ovoid-ellipsoid, 1-locular by abortion, green at first, later becoming purple or purplish-black.Seed 7 × 5 mm, smooth, brown.
