The non-medicinal applications of the plant includes the use of plant as fodder, soil binder on embankments and fuel and in making baskets, agricultural tools, sports articles, furniture and roofing material. Different parts of S. tetrasperma have been used as traditional medicine. Ethnomedicinally, the plant is used to treat ailments such as diabetes, fever, piles, epilepsy, rheumatism, swellings, stones in bladder, wound, ear pain, dysentery, cough and cold.

Deciduous dioecious trees, to 25 m high, bark 10-12 thick, pale brown, rough, vertically fissured; blaze red; young branches silky pubescent. Leaves simple, alternate; stipules lateral, ovate, cauducous; petiole 10-25 mm, slender, glabrous, grooved above; lamina 6-15 x 2-5 cm, ovate, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate; base acute or rounded; apex acuminate; margin serrate, glabrous and shining above, glaucous beneath, coriaceous; lateral nerves 10-18 pairs, pinnate, close, prominent, intercostae reticulate, faint. Flowers unisexual, in axillary catkins, to 6 cm long, minutely silky villous; male yellowish; female greenish; bracts ovate, 2 x 2 mm, densely woolly; perianth absent; stamens 5-12, unequal, free, with 2 glands at the base; anthers basifixed; disc yellow, ovary stalked, superior, 1-celled, ovoid, 4-6 ovuled; stigma 2, branched again. Fruit a capsule, 4 mm, 2-4 valved; seeds 1-4, oblong, with long deciduous hairs.