A perennial, bushy, soft-wooded small tree with a thin greyish brown bark; leaves palmately lobed with seven or more serrate lobes; flowers monoecious in terminal panniculate racemes with crowded male flowers on the upper half of the inflorescence and the pistillate at the basal half; fruits globose, explosively dehiscent, 3-seeded capsules, when young it is green and covered with fleshy prickles; seeds oblong with smooth, hard, mottled crustaceous testa with a white caruncle at the top enclosing oily and fleshy endosperm