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Shrub or small tree 1.2–7.5 m. tall, with smooth grey bark; fresh wood reported in Uganda to smell unpleasant; shoots glabrous or finely pubescent, drying black above but with pale yellowish bark, the nodes often with some persistent indumentum below the stipules but older stems quite glabrous. Leaf-blades oblong, narrowly oblong-elliptic or oblong-lanceolate, (4–)9–17(–22) cm. long, (1.2–)2–6(–7) cm. wide, narrowly acuminate at the apex, cuneate at the base, firmly papery but not coriaceous, glabrous above and usually beneath save for fine sparse adpressed pubescence on the nerves or rarely hairy; lateral nerves (5–)8–10 on each side; petiole 0.5–1(–1.8) cm. long; stipules narrowly to broadly triangular, 1.5–6 mm. long, hairy, particularly along the margins. Flowers few, sessile in the axils of the leaves, heterostylous; bracts ovate to lanceolate, 2–6 mm. long, 1–2 mm. wide (? sometimes stipules of reduced shoots), with distinctly hairy margins. Calyx pinkish white or tinged purple, particularly on the lobes, glabrous or puberulous; tube turbinate, 2 mm. long; lobes very convex in living state 0.5–3 mm. long, 2 mm. wide, sometimes with pubescent traces of intermediate accessory lobes. Corolla glistening white or violet outside, white inside; tube cylindrical, 2.5–4(–5) mm. long, glabrous to slightly pubescent outside, with densely hairy throat but tube glabrous inside or hairy only in upper half; lobes 4–5, ovate-oblong, 2.2–3.7 mm. long, 1.5–2 mm. wide, densely hairy inside with white hairs, finely hairy or glabrous outside. Stamens with anther-tips just exserted in long-styled flowers but with anthers and ± 1 mm. of filaments exserted in short-styled flowers. Ovary 4–6-locular; style 4.5–5.5 mm. long in long-styled flowers, 2.5 mm. long in short-styled flowers; stigma-lobes 4–5, oblong or subcapitate, 0.5–0.6 mm. long. Fruit intense cobalt blue, subglobose, prominently 4–6-lobed in dry state but not grooved when fresh, ± 4.5 (dry) to ± 10 (fresh) mm. in diameter, finely puberulous, the persistent calyx-lobes oblate, very obtuse, constricted at the base, 2 mm. long, 2 mm. wide; pyrenes chestnut-brown or straw-coloured, basically pyriform but with a marked ventral notch extending from the pointed end for about half the length of the pyrene, 3.2–4 mm. long, 2.3–2.5 mm. wide, 2 mm. thick.