Trees 3-8 m tall; bud scales and young leaf blades often with brown ± translucent resin when dry. Branchlets dark brown to blackish when dry, glabrous, sparsely lenticellate. Petiole less than 1 cm; leaf blade ovate to ovate-elliptic, 3-7 × 1-3 cm, rigidly leathery, dark brown when dry, abaxially with grayish adherent waxy scalelike trichomes, adaxially glabrous, base sometimes asymmetric, margin entire, apex acute to caudate-acuminate with tip obtuse to rounded. Male inflorescences axillary, solitary, rarely in clusters of 2-4, 3-5 cm; rachis slender, 1-2 mm thick. Female inflorescences rarely over 5 cm; rachis grayish scurfy; cupules 3-10 or solitary; cupule stalks ca. 1 mm, 4-7 mm in fruit. Cupule discoid, 2-5 mm × 1-1.5 cm, enclosing ca. 1/3 of nut; bracts ± united into concentric rings from base to middle of cupule, triangular, obscure. Nut depressed globose to conical, 1-1.4 × 1.2-1.6 cm, glabrous, base flat; scar 7-10 mm in diam., concave. Fl. Oct-Nov or Feb, fr. Aug-Oct of following year.

* Mixed mesophytic forests; 800-1000 m. SW Guangdong, Hainan (Changjiang Xian)