No known edible use. The root, bark and leaf latex are used medicinally to treat wounds, headache and toothache. The bark and leaf latex is taken internally to treat colic and liver trouble. Patients with fever or headache perspire in the steam of boiling young leaves. Grown as a shade tree for coffee plantations. A fibre from the bark is made into cloth. The latex is used for caulking boats and waterproofing. The wood, including the aerial roots, is used locally in light construction, tool making etc. The wood is used for fuel.

Evergreen trees, usually epiphytic, to 18 m high, aerial roots numerous; bark surface grey to greyish-brown, smooth; latex milky. Leaves simple, alternate, spiral; petiole glandular at apex below, glabrous; lamina 4-12 x 2-5 cm, elliptic, elliptic-ovate, margin entire, undulate, glabrous. Flowers unisexual; inflorescence a syconia, sessile, in axillary pairs, globose, 7 mm across, glabrous; flowers of 4 kinds; male flowers numerous; sessile or shortly pedicelled; tepals 3, subspathulate, free; stamen 1; filament 0.3 mm; anthers unequal, ovate-oblong, mucronate; female flowers sessile, sepals 3, spathulate, ovary superior, smooth, stigma cylindric or clavate; gall flowers pedicellate; tepals 3, broadly spathulate. Syconium 8-10 mm across, globose, glabrous, pink with yellow shades when ripe; achenes smooth.