An erect glaucous or yellowish or brownish shrub, usually 1–3 m. tall, occasionally taller, usually with only a few long side-branches in addition to the main stem but producing many short side-branches mainly in the flowering portions; stems up to 2–3 cm. in diam. near the base, greenish, terete or angled when young, shortly velutinous (as are all other vegetative parts, pedicels and calyces), occasionally with additional sparse small floccose tufts of stellate hairs, soon becoming angular owing to coarse longitudinal ridges originating below each node, glaucous-green to dull greyish-purple, semi-woody with a large pith, only at length glabrescent. Leaf-lamina up to 30 × 25 cm. (much smaller in upper leaves), rather dark glaucous-grey-green above, much paler below (usually conspicuously so and greyish), cordate-ovate to suborbicular-cordate or occasionally triangular-cordate, usually acuminate, with deep basal sinus, indistinctly serrate, crenate or minutely callous-dentate; petiole of larger leaves about as long as the corresponding lamina, rather stout, longitudinally sulcate, subpulvinate at the base, that of upper leaves thinner and often shorter to much shorter than the lamina. Flowers yellow, orange or apricot, numerous, on lateral and subterminal short shoots (often again branched), the flowering branchlets arranged in large lateral and terminal pseudo-panicles, each flower solitary but the buds (and new side-branches) formed in such rapid succession that the buds are often apparently fasciculate; pedicels 3 (S) cm. long, articulated in the upper 10 mm. Calyx 10–15 mm. long, shallowly cupular, lobed to about the middle; lobes 3–4 (5) mm. long, suberect, ovate-triangular to triangular or ovate-lanceolate, minutely apiculate and densely but finely white-ciliate with inconspicuous or distinctly keeled midrib. Petals 9–12 mm. long. Staminal tube densely stellate-hairy. Fruit c. 9–12 × 8 mm., depressed-globose, umbilicate, densely stellate-tomentose, often ± floccose. Mericarps 20–30, rounded apically and dorsally but in the outer (dorsal) upper portion often with an obtuse (rarely subacute) angle, 1-seeded. Seeds verruculose or smooth, glabrous.