Inside, the living sapwood is pale pink or whitish in colour, while the inner heartwood is dark red-brown to chocolate brown, with conspicuous white deposits of silica.

The leaves of L. alata are up to 25 centimetres (9.8 in) long and are tough, fairly narrow and elongated, with a rounded or slightly indented tip, and tend to occur in clusters at the ends of the twigs.

The fruits, which are wind-dispersed, contain a single, oil-rich seed in a conical capsule, which is brown when mature and is surrounded by two unequally-sized membranous ‘wings’, one up to six centimetres long and the other twice that size.

Although L. alata needs full sunlight to grow, seedlings can persist for some time in the shady undergrowth and resume growth if breaks in the canopy occur.

[4] Likewise, two chalcone tetramers were isolated as inhibitors of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)-activation induced by a tumor promoter, teleocidin B-4, from Lophira alata.

[5] This article incorporates text from the ARKive fact-file "Lophira alata" under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GFDL.