Distribution     
Native from southeastern Asia to Australia, Micronesia and other Pacific islands, now pantropical. In the Hawaiian Islands, a Polynesian introduction on Ni`ihau, Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Kaho`olawe, Hawai`i.

Habit
Small trees or shrubs 3-6 m tall; stems 4 angled, glabrous.

Leaves
Leaves glossy, membranous, elliptic to elliptic ovate, 20-45 cm long, 7-25 cm wide, glabrous, petioles stout, 1.5-2 cm long, stipules connate or distinct, 10-12 mm long, apex entire or 2-3 lobed.  

Flowers
Flowers perfect, ca. 75-90 in ovoid to globose heads, peduncles 10-30 mm long; calyx a truncate rim; corolla white, 5 lobed, the tube greenish white, 7-9 mm long, the lobes oblong deltate, ca. 7 mm long; stamens 5, scarcely exserted; style ca. 15 mm long.  

Fruit
Syncarp yellowish white, fleshy, ovoid-subglobose, 5-10 cm long, ca. 3-4 cm in diameter, soft and foetid when ripe.  

Seeds
Seeds with a distinct air chamber.  

Chromosomes
2n = 22, 44.