Melicope cornuta var. cornuta is an erect palmoid shrub ranging from 1 to 7 meters tall. The main stem, which can reach up to 2 cm in diameter, is few-branched with ascending branches that are leafy towards the apex. The stems are glabrous overall except for new growth and young inflorescences. The wood is somewhat brittle and emits a pepsin-like odor when freshly broken. The leaves are simple and opposite, with narrowly obovate blades to oblong-spatulate, measuring 12–40 cm in length and 5–13 cm in width. The apex of the leaf is bluntly obtuse to acute, and the base is abruptly truncate or obtuse at the juncture to the petiole. The leaf surfaces are glandular punctate and have entire margins. Lateral veins ascend and are connected by a deeply arched vein, with the midrib sulcate on the upper surface. Petioles measure 2–10 mm in length, and stipules are absent. The flowers appear in axillary, cymose-fasciculate inflorescences of (3–)9–15 flowers on the lower stems below current leaves. The peduncles are nearly obsolete, and pedicels are 5–10 mm long and glabrous, with young bracts being hirtellous. The flowers are bisexual (perfect) and actinomorphic (radially symmetric). The calyx comprises four sepals in imbricated pairs: suborbicular, 3–4 mm long, and 5–6 mm wide, glabrous with ciliolate margins. The corolla consists of 4 white or cream, broadly lanceolate petals that are slightly imbricate, 9–16 mm long, ciliolate but otherwise glabrous. The stamens are 8 in number, with white filaments nearly completely connate into a staminal tube, and anthers are dithecal and subsessile on lobes of the staminal tube, elongate and base subhastate, alternately larger and smaller. The ovary is superior, 4-carpellate, 4-lobed, with the carpels connate ½–¾ their length, featuring axile placentation; styles are initially connate but later strongly divergent as the fruit matures, with linear stigmas and 5–8 ovules per carpel, pendulous on short, broad funiculi; the style column is columnar with linear, erect, connate stigmas slightly thickened apically. The fruit is cruciate and chartaceous, measuring 16–33 mm in diameter and glabrous. Carpels are 10–16 mm long, with the upper part widely spreading in fruit and a short beak measuring 0.5–2 mm long. Seeds are 8 per carpel; the embryo features thin, broad, rounded cotyledons with a very short hypocotyl embedded in white endosperm. It is found in wet forests and shrublands, primarily on gulch slopes and bottoms between 340-920 meters.