Erect, intricately branched, leafy to almost leafless, spinescent shrub to 3 m high, mostly evenly branched, the ultimate branches often modified to blunt or sharp thorns 5–40 mm long. Branches straight to markedly flexuose, mostly glabrous, sometimes with scattered inconspicuous glandular hairs or the worn stubs of these. Leaves at first solitary at the nodes, soon replaced by axillary clusters of 2–5 leaves, sometimes very scattered, sessile; lamina narrowly elliptic to linear or narrowly obovate (rarely obovate), mostly with bluntly acute to rounded apex, mostly 5–30 mm long, to 2 mm wide, entire, ± membranaceous, pubescent when young with mainly glandular hairs, soon glabrescent. Flowers in clusters of 1–12, borne terminally at the leaf clusters (often at the thorn bases), arranged in cymes of 3–5, but usually with only 1 or 2 open at any one time, the cymes and individual flowers subtended by bracts; forming rosette-like clusters at the nodes; bracts 0.5–1.5 mm long; pedicels 3–5.5 mm long. Calyx 2–3 mm long. Corolla 8–18 (–25) mm long, white to creamy white, rarely pale yellow, the striations maroon, purple, brown or green; tube rim with a corona formed from 3 swellings below each lobe; lobes narrowly triangular to ± linear, 4–12 (–20) mm long, 1.5–2.5 mm wide, inclining, spreading or reclining, usually with a tuft of non-glandular hairs at the apex, margins flat. Stamens: longer pair 3.5–4 mm long, shorter pair 2.5–3.5 mm long. Capsule ellipsoid, 6–8 mm long. Seeds 8–15 in all, c. 2 mm long.
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