The petiole (leaf stalk) is about 5 mm (0.2 in) long and produces a milky exudate (sap) when broken.

The flowers have 5 overlapping sepals about 6 mm (0.2 in) long, which have fine rusty brown hairs on both sides.

[5][6][7][8] This plant was first described as Chrysophyllum castanospermum in 1919 by Australian botanist Cyril Tenison White, based on a specimen he collected in the upper parts of the Johnstone River.

[6] In 1923, he and fellow Australian botanist William Douglas Francis published a new description after examining flowering specimens from the Atherton Tableland collected by G. Curry, and they transferred it to the genus Lucuma, giving it the new combination L. castanosperma.

[9] The species was renamed again in 1942, when Swiss botanist Charles Baehni published a paper in the journal Candollea in which he gave it the new binomial Pouteria castanosperma.

[7] Most recently, in 1963, French botanist André Aubréville created the new genus Van-royena for the plant, implying some unique characteristics of the species.