Tree, to 25 m tall, mostly 20-50 cm dbh; outer bark thin, brown, fissured and often flaky (at least near base), fine-grained; inner bark tan to light brown, moderately thick, fine-grained; wood white; sap milky, with a foul, pungent odor. Petioles 5-10 mm long, canaliculate; blades oblong-elliptic, narrowly acuminate, acute to attenuate at base, 6-15 cm long, 2.5-5.5 cm wide, +/- glabrous, stiff, usually folded along arched midrib, the reticulate venation prominulous. Flower clusters dense, of usually 15-25 flowers, often at leafless nodes; pedicels 4-5 mm long; flowers greenish-white, ca 2 mm long; sepals 4-6, thick, ovate to rounded, blunt at apex, 1.5-2 mm long; pedicels and sepals +/- equally ferruginous-pubescent with minute T-shaped appressed trichomes, the sepals +/- patulose-pubescent inside; corolla usually 6-lobed, ca 4.5 mm wide, 1.7-2 mm long, lobed nearly to the thickened base, the lobes equal, rounded at apex, ciliate (otherwise glabrous); stamens 5 or 6, shorter than and borne opposite the corolla lobes; filaments fused to corolla tube most of their length; anthers narrowly ovate, less than 1 mm long, pubescent; staminodia 5 or 6, broadly ovate, nearly sessile, borne at about the level of the anthers and alternating with the petals, pubescent at least marginally with trichomes like cilia of corolla lobes; ovary depressed-globose, densely woolly at base, glabrous apically; style to 1.3 mm long, narrowly conical, +/- equaling length of style; stigma simple. Fruits ellipsoid, usually weakly oblique, 2.5-2.8 cm long, 1.5-1.9 cm diam, violet-purple or green heavily tinged with violet-purple at maturity; exocarp yellowish-green inside, hard, to 4 mm thick, with slight milky sap at periphery; seed 1, ellipsoid, ca 1.8 cm long, somewhat compressed, brown, surrounded by a thin, very tasty, sweet, gray mesocarp (the taste soon disappearing), the hilum extending nearly the full length of seed, more than 3 mm wide. Croat 14874, 17052. In Panama, known from BCI and from tropical wet forest in Panama (El Llano-Carti Road).