A monoecious, glabrous to pubescent, bushy shrub or small tree up to 5(-18) m tall with disagreeable scent, with phyllanthoid branching, bark rough, brown or grey, cataphylls lanceolate, with triangular stipules; deciduous branchlets steeply ascending, (8.5-)10-20(-25) cm long, with (10-)13-20(-25) leaves. Leaves elliptical to elliptical-ovate or elliptical-obovate, 10-50 mm x 5-27 mm, cuneate to rounded at base, apex obtuse to emarginate, shortly petiolate, stipules lanceolate. Cymules usually axillary or sometimes on leafless shoots and resembling a raceme, usually bisexual and composed of 1(-2) female flowers and up to 8 male ones; flowers with 5-6 calyx lobes and 5(-6) disk segments; male flowers with 5-6 stamens, in two sets, one with longer filaments fused into a central column and one with shorter, free filaments, anthers free, dehiscing longitudinally; female flowers on a slender pedicel, styles bifid, free but connivent over the top of the ovary. Fruit a berry, globose or oblate, 4-6 mm in diameter, smooth, blueish-black when ripe. Seeds nearly smooth.

Diuretic, alterative, depurative, refrigerant and odontalgic (decoction of the leaves or bark)

PROSEA (Plant Resources of South-East Asia) Foundation

Applied to the abdomen as a remedy for pinworms (leaves); rubbed onto the chest to alleviate asthma (stems and leaves); taken internally for asthma (infusion of the roots); to treat a sore throat (decoction of leaves); dusted over wounds to aid the healing process (dried and powdered leaves); a cure for dysentery (infusion of the bark); to treat smallpox and syphilis (plant).