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A shrub or small tree. It can be spreading or scrambling. It grows 5 m tall. It can grow 15 m tall. The young branches are hairy. The leaves are alternate and simple and taper at the tip to a long point. The leaves are 3-10 cm long by 2-5 cm wide. They are oblong to sword shaped. They are shiny above and paler underneath. Male and female flowers are separate. They are along long stalks. The flowers are pale green to yellow. There are several fruit along a stalk. They are flattened and fleshy.
Female flowers: pedicels 0.5–1 mm long, extending to up to 4 mm long in fruit; calyx 1 × 1 mm, squarely cupular, truncate or very shallowly and broadly 3(4–5)-lobed to one-third, otherwise ± as in the male; disk c. 1 mm in diameter, annular, entire or crenellate; ovary 2 × 1 mm, fusiform-ellipsoid, smooth, glabrous, brown; styles 3–4, usually terminal, 1 mm long, strongly recurved, usually glabrous.
Male flowers: pedicels very short or absent; calyx 3–4-lobed, the lobes 0.5 mm long, subequal, obtuse, glabrous without, pubescent within, ciliate, pale green; disk continuous, thick, enfolding the 3 stamens; filaments 2–2.5 mm long, anthers 0.3 × 0.5 mm, crimson to dark brown; pistillode 1 mm tall, cylindric, scarcely 2–3-lobed at the apex, glabrous.
Fruits (6)7–9(10) × (4)5–7.5 mm when dried, 8–10(12) × 5–8 mm when fresh, ellipsoid, slightly asymmetrical, strongly compressed, irregularly and coarsely foveolate when dried, glabrous, shiny, olive-green at first, turning through whitish to red, reddish-yellow, brownish-pink, purple or black when ripe, very juicy.
Male inflorescences 3–13 cm long, terminal or subterminal usually on lateral shoots, spicate, often with a lateral basal spike, pendulous; bracts minute, but up to 5 mm long on galled inflorescences.
A spreading, sometimes scrambling, evergreen shrub or tree up to 15 m tall, often with only a few long lax drooping branches; bole up to 50 cm in diameter, aerial roots sometimes formed.
Female inflorescences 1–8 cm long, extending to up to 17 cm long (much longer in W Africa and Zaire) in fruit, pendulous, unbranched, not galled, otherwise as in male.
Stipules 0.4–1.5(3.5) cm × 1–2(4) mm, linear to narrowly elliptic, acute, pubescent, foliaceous on suckers, deciduous or subpersistent.
Bark smooth, longitudinally furrowed, or reticulate and flaking, pale grey or brownish.
Young shoots and buds densely ferrugineous-pubescent at first, soon glabrescent.
Petioles 2–8(15) mm long, adaxially canaliculate.
Seeds 6 × 3 × 1 mm, ellipsoid, often aborted.
Inflorescences pendulous, very conspicuous
A shrub or tree, to 30 ft. high
Fruits red ripening to purple
Twigs sparingly lenticellate.
Wood hard, yellowish-white.
Filaments bright red
Ovary red
