Shrub or tree, to 10 m tall; branches and branchlets stout or slender, obtusely tetragonal, flattened and ampliate at the nodes, densely and irregularly granulose-or furfuraceous-tomentellous with pale ochraceous hairs, more or less verruculose with numerous elevated lenticels and armed with short and more or less recurved prickles. Leaves opposite; thin-membranous, oblong-obovate or obovate-elliptic, often undulate in drying, 7-21 cm long, 2.7-9.5 cm wide, abruptly acute or short-acuminate, regularly serrulate with glandulose-mucronate-antrorse teeth, basally acute to cuneate and somewhat attenuate into the petiole, deep-green and shiny above, somewhat lighter beneath, granulose-tomentellous or furfuraceous-pubes-cent on both surfaces, especially along the venation, glabrescent except on the veins, petioles 0.6-3.2 cm long, furfuraceous or ochraceous-tomentellous; Inflores-cences axillary or supra-axillary, solitary, opposite, cymes 2-4.5 cm long, 3-6 cm wide, much shorter than the subtending leaves, usually manifestly bifurcate, often copiously armed with small recurved prickles, loosely many-flowered, bracteolate, often reduced upwards, peduncles 0.8-1.7 cm long, furfuraceous, often copiously prickly; pedicels furfuraceous, 1-3 mm long in the uppermost cymes, 3-10 mm long in the lower and larger cymes; calyx obconic or obconic-campanulate, 5-7 mm long 4-5.3 mm wide, more or less densely furfuraceous, verruculose, often with a few large glands outside, 2-or 4-lobed, the lobes equal, 1.5-2.1 mm long, semiorbicular, truncate, apiculate with an excurrent vein; corolla hypocrateriform, white or pinkish-white, the tube cylindric, 8-8.3 mm long, glabrous outside, pubescent within, the lobes 4, oval-or oblong-lingulate, 5-6.3 mm long, 3.1-3.2 mm wide, subacute or obtuse; stamens 4, inserted ca. 3.6 mm below the mouth of the corolla-tube, long-exserted in the staminate flowers, the filaments flattened, 2.1-10.8 mm long, pilose toward the base; pistil glabrous, included in the staminate flowers, the style 5.2-6.4 mm long, the stigma branches 2.1-3.9 mm long, the ovary ovate or pyriform, subtetragonal, truncate at both ends, ca. 1 mm long and wide, obscurely 4-lobed, 4-celled. Fruit pale-yellow and semi-pellucid.
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