A small tree, 15 to 20 feet high; trunk rather crooked, with smooth bark; branches slender, smooth, terete; bark pale whitish-brown, marked with scars of the fallen leaves. Leaves alternate, on stalks nearly half as long as the blade; blade about 4½ inches long by 2 inches wide then full grown, thin, glabrous, ovate, attenuate at the apex, faintly and rather distantly serrate, pale bright green, veins prominent beneath, petiole breaking up immediately on entering the leaf into 5 veins, the two lateral faint, the two intermediate well marked, giving with the mid-rib a triple-nerved aspect to the leaf; on either side of base of the blade and connected with the petiole is a prominent sessile gland; stipules minute, filiform, deciduous; the young leaves and buds with scattered stellate hairs. Flowers in lax terminal, erect racemes, unisexual; the male at the upper part of the raceme, the female less numerous at the lower part; pedicels longer than the flowers; bracts minute. Seeds nearly ½ an inch long, ovoid, rounded on the back, marked on the ventral surface by a fine raised raphe; testa thin, brittle, light brown, black within; embryo with large foliaceous cotyledons, lying in the centre of the oily endosperm. |
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