Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Large shrubs or trees up to 10(–30) m tall.

Stems: Trunk grayish cream or dull pale brown, thick, smooth, wood very soft and brittle, distal internodes usually short, but not condensed to an enlargement.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite to subopposite, sometimes also alternate on the same tree. Blades broadly elliptic to oblong or ovate, 9–30 cm long, 6–18 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Base acute to rounded, truncate, or rarely subcordate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or appressed puberulent along midrib and with short–pubescent domatia in lateral vein axils; blades, deciduous in very dry seasons, usually falcate, thin (or fleshy when exposed to salt spray). Margins entire to sinuate. Lateral veins distinct, 6–10 pairs, slightly arching apically, inconspicuously anastomosing close to margins, tertiary and higher order venation very fine. Petioles 2–3 or more cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers irregularly crowded at tips of branches, of terminal, corymbiform cymes, these distally somewhat rounded, 5–8 cm long, enlarging and becoming more open in fruit, peduncles less than half length of cymes, alternately or irregularly branching 3–5 times, flowers and cymes notably appressed brown puberulent. Flowers unisexual (the plants monoecious or dioecious), pedicellate. Calyx of staminate flowers flaring or slightly funnel–form, prominently striate or plicate, minutely glandular, margins bluntly dentate or minutely lobed. Calyx of pistillate flowers ellipsoid, prominently 5–ribbed, densely glandular tomentose, ribs glandular tuberculate, apex contracted to a short tube with 5 teeth. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flowers 5–6; anthers broadly oblong, slightly exserted. Ovary superior. Pistillate flower with a short tube with 5 teeth, closely surrounding the exserted style; stigma several times branched into filiform processes.

Fruit: Anthocarps cylindrical to clavate; ca. 1 cm long; apical portion fertile; not gradually tapering to a rostrum; ribs prominently glandular spinulose; very sticky. Seeds 1 per fruit; closely enclosed by the thin ovary wall.

Ploidy:

Habitat: In coastal areas.

Elevation Range: 0–200 m.