Small trees but sometimes very tall, fluted or with steep, high buttresses; slash thick, brown with lighter brown to orange-yellow stripes and spots, granular and gritty outside, with brittle fibers inside, exuding a small amount of clear sap. Leaves simple, alernate, stipules leaving an annular scar at the nopdes. Fruit sideways flattened, fleshy, containing one nut. There seems to be an edible variety and a non-edible variety (see I. wombolu), but the distinction is unclear. Seeds very rich in oil. The difference with I. robur, not yet recorded from Liberia but present in both Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, is that the finer venation is not, or lax scalariform, whereas I. robur has a close, fine scalariform reticulation. See also PROTA database.