Tall tailflower

Erect shrub to 2.7 m with 1 or 2 stems, branches often tinged with purple, branches and leaves glabrous, rarely with scattered glandular hairs; seedlings with prickles on stems.

Leaves obovate to narrowly obovate-elliptic, occasionally spathulate or elliptic, sessile or almost so, 15–80 mm long, 7–35 mm wide, thick and fleshy, entire, or the juvenile leaves dentate.

Inflorescence panicle-like, leafless except at base; pedicels 3–8 mm long. Calyx 4–8 mm long; tube markedly bulbous, contracted immediately below lobes and widest at middle, maximum diam. 4–5 mm, thick-textured.