Plants shrubby at base, often with upright herbaceous branches, about 1 m. high or less, the bark on the older branches exfoliating in very thin reddish-brown sheets; plant ultimately glabrate, but juvenile stems and leaves vestite with loosely appressed silky straight yellowish-white hairs 0.7-1.5 mm. long. Leaflets often 13 (9-19 according to Bitter), the proximal ones much reduced in size, the 7 distal ones all alike (or the terminal one slightly larger), elliptic or oblong to obovate, often 5-8 mm. wide, 10-20 mm. long, acute at each end or obtuse at tips, the two edges very unequal at base, the proximal edge of at least the terminal pair decurrent on the rachis, the petiolules mostly 1-2 mm. long; margins of leaflets rather coarsely crenate-serrate with 6-8 teeth on each edge, the teeth often pilose-tufted; stipule's adherent to the rachis, scarious, often reddish-brown, con-nate at base and forming a sheath 1-2 mm. long about the stem, thence tapering gradually toward tips, the body 5-15 mm. long, the free herbaceous tips linear, entire, 2-6 mm. long-margins of stipules, rachis and sometimes axis of inflorescence with scattered stipitate glands; pubescence of leaf at maturity often reduced to tufts at bases of leaflets, on upper side. Flowers racemosely arranged on leafless axillary branches mostly 20-30 cm. long, relatively few (often 8-10) to a branch, each borne on a short lateral bracteate branchlet (up to 1.5 cm. long, or most often 1 mm. long or less) which is bibracteolate at summit and terminated by a pedicel 1-4 mm. long; calyx-lobes 4, green (contrasting with the reddish hypan-thium), ovate, acute, about 1 mm. wide and 1.5 mm. long, at anthesis crowning the flower and much exceeding the spines of the hypanthium, but at maturity im-mersed in the spines; stamens 3-4, purplish, 1-2 mm. long, the anthers reniform, 0.5 (-0.8) mm. long and about 1.2 mm. wide after dehiscence; style very short, tipped by the expanded flattened peltate stigma which is about 1.5 mm. broad, bilateral, the divisions deeply lacerate; hypanthium in anthesis cylindric, reddish, at maturity pendent, broadly ovoid or ellipsoid to globose, 3-5 mm. in diameter and 5-8 mm. long (exclusive of spines), the outer layer inflated, membranaceous, glabrous or puberulent; spines uniformly distributed, spreading, arising from the 10-12 ribs of the hypanthium (about 6 to each rib) which are concealed by the outer inflated layer; visible part of the spines 2-3 mm. long, purplish-red or brown, commonly with 3 retrorsely pointed barbs at apex.
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