A small tree, grows to a height of 20 feet, and branching thickly at the top. The branches and twigs are angular, rather compressed, striated, downy, and ferruginous. The leaves are petiolated, alternate, ovate, with a short, but obtuse point, entire, slightly nerved, bright-green above, with a few scattered leprous dots, silvery, and very downy beneath. The petioles are short and scurfy. The racemes are axillary and terminal, branched or compound; the branches short, divaricating, and covered with numerous, closely-parted, subsessile, whitish, monoecious flowers. The sterile flowers are above and smallest; the fertile ones below, few, and on short stalks. The stamens, 10 to 12. The capsule is roundish, minutely warted, scurfy, and not much larger than a pea, with 3 furrows, 3 cells, and 6 valves.

Antiseptic, astringent, bitter, digestive, hypotensive, narcotic, sedative, stimulant, stomachic and tonic.

Tropical Plant Database
King's American Dispensatory
The Physiomedical Dispensatory

Alpha-pinene, beta-elemene, beta-pinene, betaine, borneol, camphene, d-limonene, dipentene, eugenol, gamma-terpinene, lignin, myrcene, p-cymene, tannin, terpinen-4-ol, vanillin (bark).

For digestive complaints, fever, anemia, hemorrhoids and high blood pressure (bark)