Young leaves used as vegetable. Bark is astringent and blood purifier, used for the treatment of oedema, skin disease, diarrhoea, menorrhagia, leucorrhoea.

Deciduous trees, often epiphytic, to 15 m high; aerial roots absent; bark surface dark brown, rough. Leaves simple, alternate spiral, yellowish-red; lamina oblong, margin entire, looped near the margin. Flowers unisexual; inflorescence a syconia, sessile; flowers of 4 kinds; male flowers few, sessile, only near the mouth of receptacle, tepals 2-3, ovate, red; female flowers sessile, tepals 3-4, red; ovary superior, obovate, dark red; gall flowers like female. Syconium, yellowish-white and dotted.