Erect shrub or tree to 12 m high, often suckering and forming thickets; bark fissured, corky. Leaves opposite, narrow-lanceolate to narrow-elliptic or oblong-elliptic, 6-18 cm long, 7-45 mm wide, apex + acuminate, margins undulate, soft and thin, glabrous to pubescent; petiole 1-5 cm long. Flowers whitish, scented. Calyx lobes 1 mm long. Corolla tube 2--3 mm long, lobes 6--10 mm long, narrow, obtuse. Follicles compressed, 6--24 cm long, c. 10 mm wide.

Anthelmintic, antiperiodic (bark); cerebrospinal stimulant and tonic

King's American Dispensatory

Alstonine, porphrine and astonidine

For chronic diarrhoea, dysentery and in intermittent fever; in curing certain forms of rheumatism (inner bark)