An evergreen tree, 6-l5 m tall, with red, smooth, thick bark, and tomentose spreading branches. Leaves usually near the end of branches., fascicled; blade l5-30 cm long, 5-l0 cm broad, glabrous above, pubescent on the nerves below, broadly elliptic—oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, regularly serrate, secondary veins 30-40 paired ending in the serratures, not forking at the margins; petiole channelled, sheathing and densely tomentose at the base, 2-4 cm. Flowers solitary, terminal, bisexual, drooping, l5-20 cm. across, appearing with leaves; pedicel 7-8 cm., clavate, smooth. Sepals c. 4 cm long, c. 2 cm broad, orbicular, concave, accre¬scent, fleshy, thick but with membranous margins, yellowish green. Petals 8-l0 cm long, 5-8 cm broad, spreading, obovate or oblong, white. Stamens numerous, inner long, (c. 20 cm) bending over the outer erect and short ones (c. l 5cm) forming a large yellow globe in the centre crowned by the white spreading rays of stigma; anthers versatile, 0.5-l cm long. Carpels l6-20; ovary fleshy, pale green, sub-reniform; stigmas linear, lanceolate, recurved. Fruit indehiscent, permanently covered by greenish, yellow or orange calyx, mucilaginous, 5-l2 cm. across. Seeds numerous, small, thickened, hairy along the edges, reniform.