An evergreen tree attaining a considerable height in the wild, but occasionally a shrub; stems downy when young. Leaves entire, leathery, elliptic or oblong-lanceolate, mostly 6 to 8 in. long, 17⁄8 to 3 in. wide, prolonged at the apex into a slender tail-like point, cuneate at the base, glabrous above, the underside of a beautiful silvery green and covered with a fine felt of stellate hairs; veins in eight to ten pairs; petioles 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 in. long. Female flowers sessile in concrescent clusters of three. Fruit-spikes stout, lenticellate, up to 6 in. long. Fruits in threes, sessile, fused together by their cups into a bony mass 11⁄2 in. or more wide, the upper clusters partly united to their neighbours, forming conglomerations of six or nine fruits. Acorn wider than long, almost wholly enclosed in the cup.
A native of the eastern Himalaya. There is an example of this species at Caerhays, Cornwall, measuring 44 × 41⁄2 + 31⁄4 ft, with a wide spread (1971). This occasionally bears the remarkable fruits, resembling colonies of giant barnacles.