Unarmed tree, to 12 m tall and 25 cm dbh; outer bark thin, coarse, cracked; inner bark tan, finely granular; branchlets, leaf axes, and lower surface of leaves densely villous with reddish-brown trichomes; sap with weak, pungent odor. Leaves bipinnate, to 20 cm long, with 7-11 pairs of pinnae; petioles with a gland near apex; rachis and pinnular rachis with glands at nodes; leaflets in 9-16 pairs per pinna, oblong, oblique, ca 10 mm long, 4-5 mm wide, thick, glabrous above except on midrib, pubescent below, the margins revolute. Flowers minute, sessile, in globular, long-pedunculate, axillary heads; peduncles ca 6 cm long; flowering rachis ca 4 mm long; calyx funnelform, ca 3 mm long, golden-brown, hirsutulous, shallowly 5- or 6-dentate; corolla funnelform, ca 4 mm long, the outside bearing dense, golden-brown, hirsute pubescence; stamens ca 13, the filaments united basally. Legumes prominently coiled and somewhat constricted between each seed, to ca 11 cm long and 1.4 cm wide, brown, densely short-villous, twisting open irregularly at maturity to expose black seeds on the red-orange inner surface of the valves. Shattuck 237 Represented from the island only by the type collection made at Zetek Trail 2400. Flowers in October. Some fruits known from August to December. Known only from Panama, from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone (BCI and adjacent areas around Gatun Lake).