A small deciduous tree, the young shoots glabrous. Leaves very obliquely ovate, the base cut straight across in a slanting direction or slightly heart-shaped, the apex acuminate, margins conspicuously and fairly regularly toothed except at the apex and the base, 2 to 31⁄2 in. long and 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 in. wide in adult trees, much larger (up to 5 or 6 in. long) in young, cultivated ones, dull dark green and glabrous above, green beneath, and with tufts of rusty brown down in the axils of the veins, but not at the base, where the main veins join the leaf-stalk; stalk glabrous, 3⁄4 to 11⁄2 in. long. The cymes carry seven to fifteen flowers and the bract is glabrous, 2 to 3 in. long. Fruits roundish or slightly obovoid and ribbed.
Native of western and central China, occurring as far south as Yunnan; discovered in Kansu by Potanin in 1875. A plant in the Coombe Wood nursery of Messrs Veitch, introduced by Wilson from northwest Hupeh in 1901, was probably this species; some grafts from it were made, but there is no present record of the Wilson introduction in cultivation. It was collected in Yunnan by Forrest, who may also have sent seeds. There is a small example in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, planted in 1934.
T. paucicostata belongs to the same group as T. cordata and T. japonica, but differs in the ovate leaves, obliquely truncate at the base.