A large shrub or tree, 10-40 m tall. Stem branching sympodially with grey-black, roughly fissured bark. Leaves with 2-4.5 cm long, pruinose petiole; lamina narrowly to broadly elliptic-ovate, 5-20 cm long, 3-8 cm broad, cuneate at the base, entire, acute-acuminate but not mucronate, glabrous, leathery, bright green above, pale beneath; stipules oblong-lanceolate, 4-5 cm long, mostly reddish. Flowers solitary, axillary, articulated to the reflexed peduncle; pedicel 1-1.5 cm long, pruinose. Hypanthium campanulate, 1-2 cm long, smooth below, ribbed above, reddish in colour, lobes equal to or shorter than the tube, linear, erect. Petals brown, bilobed to halfway down or less, silky-hairy at the base, especially near the margins, lobes 2-4-bristled at the tips. Stamens with alternately long and short filaments; anthers linear-oblong, 4-5 mm long, dorsifixed, apiculate. Style angular towards the base, filiform, stigmatic lobes 3-4, conspicuous. Berry 2-3 cm long, crowned by calyx lobes. Hypocotyl 10-25 cm long, ± fusiform, longitudinally ridged.

Fl. Per.: December-February.

Lectotype: Rheede, Hort. Malab. 6. t. 31. 1683.

Distribution: Tropical Coasts of South and East Africa, Indian Ocean Islands, (Pakistan?), eastwards to Australia and Polynesia.

Reported from littoral and estuarian forest at mouth of Indus by Henslow (l.c.) and Murray (Plants & Drugs of Sind, 191. 1881). The author, however, could not trace any herbarium specimen at Kew Herbarium, British Museum (Natural History) or Edinburgh and the presence of this species in Pakistan requires confirmation.