Polygamous or dioecious tree with a single trunk, 2-10 m tall, occasionally shrub-like; bark yellowish green or greyish grequ, flaking in small yellowish papery pieces; young branchlets glabrous, spine-tipped. Leaves usually simple but on long shoots often trifolio­late with smaller lateral leaflets, with long glan­dular hairs at base but otherwise glabrous, green, subsessile, margin crenate-serrate, occa­sionally almost entire, apex acute or obtuse, base cuneate, lamina of simple leaves/terminal leaflet obovate or elliptic (20-)35(-65)x (12—)25(-45) mm, lateral leaflets elliptic, (8-)15(-30)X(4-)7(-15) mm. Inflores­cence: reduced cymes or flowers borne in clus­ters. Flowers bisexual, occasionally unisexual, hypogynous. Pedicel 0,5-1 mm long, pedicel and calyx with large glandular hairs. Disc 4-lobed, not folded, inside of lobes not grooved, not adnate to perianth. Stamens 8. Fruit subglo-bose, ± 14x13x12 mm, glabrous; putamen rugose, with a hump on less convex face; pseudo-aril red, with 4 arms of equal length reaching almost to apex of putamen. Figs 3, 4 &5.