Evergreen small trees, up to 10 m tall. Bark black-brown, inner bark with cinnamic aldehyde flavor. Young branchlets gray, somewhat tetragonous, white-maculate. Buds sericeous-puberulent. Leaves usually opposite; petiole ca. 2 cm, glabrous; leaf blade greenish white abaxially, green and shiny adaxially, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, 11-16 × 4.5-5.5 cm, leathery or subleathery, glabrous on both surfaces, triplinerved, midrib and lateral veins elevated on both surfaces, transverse veins and veinlets reticulate, conspicuously foveolate abaxially, base acute, margin entire, apex acuminate. Panicle axillary or terminal, 10-12 cm; peduncle and rachis sericeous-puberulent. Flowers yellow, ca. 6 mm. Perianth tube obconical; perianth lobes 6, oblong, subequal, gray puberulent outside. Fertile stamens 9; filaments hairy near base, those of 3rd whorl each with 2 glands, others glandless; anthers 4-celled; cells of 1st and 2nd whorls introrse but those of 3rd whorl extrorse. Ovary ovoid, 10-15 mm, glabrous; style short; stigma discoid. Fruit ovoid, 10-15 mm, black when mature; perianth cup in fruit cupuliform, dilated, dentate, teeth truncate or acute at apex.
Fruits brown or black, ovoid, 1.3 cm. long.
Flowers small, yellowish or greenish white, silky outside.
Leaves bright red when young, green with age, subopposite, ovate-oblong, elliptic or lanceolate, 5-19 cm. long, (2-)5-9.5 cm. wide, narrowed to a narrowly rounded tip, cuneate to truncate at the base, prominently 3-5-nerved from the base, coriaceous, glossy, without glands in the nerve-axils.
