Habit: Large tree

Evergreen trees, to 35 m high, bark 6-8 mm thick, greyish-brown, smooth; blaze pink; exudation black, acrid. Leaves simple, alternate, crowded at the tips of branchlets, estipulate; petiole 10-20 mm, stout, glabrous, winged; lamina 8-18 x 3.5-7 cm, elliptic-ovate, obovate-spathulate or spathulate, base cuneate or attenuate, apex obtuse, sometimes emarginate; margin entire, glabrous, coriaceous; lateral nerves 13-18 pairs, pinnate, prominent; secondary laterals prominent, intercostae reticulate, prominent. Flowers bisexual, cream coloured, 8 mm across, in axillary and terminal panicles; calyx spathaceous, splitting irregularly, deciduous; petals 4-6, inserted on the disc and adnate with it below, imbricate, spreading in flower; disc elongate, cylindric; stamens 4-6, inserted on the disc; filaments filiform; anthers dorsifixed; ovary obliquely ovoid, superior, apocarpous, sessile or stipitate, pubescent, 1-celled, 1-ovuled, pendulous; style lateral, filiform; stigma simple. Fruit a drupe, 2.5-3.5 cm across, globose, brown; pericarp thick-scurfy; seed adherent to the pericarp.

Habit

Large trees, up to 35 m tall.

Trunk & Bark

Bark smooth, often with scars of irregular flakes.

Branches and Branchlets

Branches with architecture of “Aubreville model”, Branchlets stout, glabrous.

Exudates

Latex white, not profuse.

Leaves

Leaves simple, alternate, spiral, clustered at twig ends; petiole less than 0.5 cm long, stout, glabrous, planoconvex in cross section; lamina 6.5-19 x 1.8-7 cm, oblanceolate or spathulate, apex obtuse or rounded (slightly acuminate in young trees), base cuneate to decurrent, margin entire, coriaceous, glabrous; midrib flat above; secondary nerves 12-18 pairs; tertiary nerves reticulo-percurrent or broadly reticulate.

Inflorescence / Flower

Inflorescence axillary or terminal panicles, 8-10 cm long, tomentose; flowers bisexual, white

Fruit and Seed

Drupe, woody, globose, 3.8 cm across, 1-seeded.