A slender, small to medium-sized, often deciduous tree, up to 10(–15) m tall , single or multi-stemmed and loosely branched. The bark is pale grey or brownish. The branches are hairy when young and slender and whip-like, often growing in a flat plane. The leaves are ovate to lanceolate, 25–140 × 15–80 mm when mature, rather soft-textured and hairy beneath.

The flowers appear with or just before the leaves and, like them, are borne in clusters of 2–18 flowers at the end of the slender branches. The calyx is small and cup-shaped with mostly five small teeth and is densely and minutely hairy. The buds are long and slender, very slightly swollen at the tips and sparsely hairy on the outside, splitting into five pale pistachio-green, ribbon-like like petals with a waxy texture, 35–95 × ± 5 mm. The mostly 10 stamens are joined into a slender, pure white, funnel-like tube slightly shorter than the petals, crowned with a fringe of hair-like appendages at the mouth. The anthers are situated in a ring at the mouth of the staminal tube but the style projects 6–18 mm beyond it, terminating in a knob-like head. The flowers are beautifully fragrant, and the petals drop before they wither, covering the ground under the tree with a pale carpet. Remarkably few fruits are produced for so many flowers. They are globe-like with 5–10 woody segments, 13–25 mm in diameter, and glossy pale yellowish when ripe. The fruits split along the ribs into sharp, spreading lobes, rather like a starfish, that curl back to expose the small, glossy orange or red seeds.

The species is moderately quick-growing.