Shrub or small tree 1–4 m tall (see note), usually with rather robust shoots, divaricately branched and with ultimate branches often at right angles, or branchlets very reduced and cushion-like; young shoots densely velvety tomentose, later glabrous and with dark reddish-brown or black ± peeling bark, rugulose.Leaves 2.5–8 × 1–6 cm, narrowly oblong or elliptic to almost round, rounded or sometimes obtuse at apex, rounded or subcordate at base, ± thick, somewhat discolorous, densely thickly velvety tomentose, particularly beneath; venation impressed above and raised beneath, the leaf surface usually rugulose and distinctly bullate; petiole thick, 2–3.5 mm long; stipules shortly connate, 3–5 mm long with linear appendage 3–7 mm long, densely tomentose outside, villous inside, deciduous.Flowers in dense few- to many-flowered cymes in opposite axils, axillary, or sometimes appearing to be terminal on very short lateral branchlets with suppressed leaves; peduncles 2–4 mm long; pedicels c. 1 mm long; bracts 9 × 2–5 mm, ovate-oblong to lanceolate; all parts densely tomentose.Calyx densely velvety or woolly; tube 1–1.5 mm, subglobose; lobes 2–4 mm long, triangular to linear-subulate.Corolla tailed at apex in bud; green to yellow, densely velvety; tube 3.5 mm long, cylindrical, with a ring of deflexed hairs towards the base inside; lobes 2–4 × 2 mm, ovate to narrowly triangular, apiculate.Style exserted 0–2 mm; pollen presenter 0.5–1.2 mm long, cylindrical-sulcate, 4–5-lobed at the apex.Fruit orange-brown, 1–1.4 cm in diameter, subglobose, finely velvety tomentose, with 1–4(5) pyrenes, crowned by the persistent calyx.Pyrenes straw-coloured, 9 mm long.