Azima tetracantha Lam.

Shrubs, dioecious, erect, spiny, bushy and sometimes scandent, 60-90 cm tall, or climbing up to 8 m high; branchlets terete or quadrate, glabrous or sparsely and shortly to densely long-pubescent. Leaves opposite or subopposite, decussate, shortly petioled, exstipulate, or with rudimentary stipules, rather coriaceous, elliptic-oblong, ovate-oblong to broadly-oblong, suborbicular, rounded or somewhat narrowed to base and apex, 1.3-5.5 cm long and 0.7-4.3 cm broad, mucronate, two pairs of lateral nerves from near the base, nerves and veins prominent on both sides, glabrous or sometimes pubescent with short hairs or rarely densely pubescent with long hairs. Spines usually 51 mm the axils of the leaves, that is 4 at each node, varying in length, 0.5-5 cm long (sometimes longer), glabrous or pubescent. Inflorescence axillary, sometimes also terminal, glabrous or pubescent, with flowers usually sessile, solitary, glomerulate or in branched or unbranched, up to 3 cm long, spikes or cymes, the spicate form with flowers often in pairs at intervals on the rhachis; bracts ovate, mucronate, mucro often long and spinous, pubescent to glabrescent, ciliate. Calyx campanulate, 2-4 mm long pubescent without, sometimes glabrescent with only a few hairs persisting at the base, 4-1obed for about 1/3 of its length, slightly 2-lipped; lobes mucronate. Corolla greenish to yellowish, petals 4, inserted at the base of the ovary, linear-oblong to oblong, thin textured, eventually longer than the calyx, the upper portion reflexing over the calyx 2-5 mm long. Male flowers: stamens inserted at the base of the rudimentary ovary on a small disc, alternating with the petals, filaments flattened, slightly longer than the calyx tube, anthers exserted, about 1.5 mm long, minutely apiculate; ovary rudimentary in the centre of the filaments on the disc. Female flowers: staminodes With short flat filaments and arrowhead-shaped sterile anthers about as long as the filaments, appressed to the ovary; ovary eventually longer than the calyx, up to 4.5 mm long, only slightly narrowing in the upper half with a broad sessile terminal stigma; locules 2-3 with 1-2 erect ovules in each cell. Fruit globose, 0.5-1 cm diam. (in dried condition), crowned by the persistent stigma, green to yellowish or white. Seed brownish, flattened, cotyledons cordate with the lobes overlapping and so appearing like a circular disc, tip of radicle protruding at the base from between the lobes.

Mangrove edges, sea-dunes, coastal bushland, not far from high-water mark; scrub on eroded ground, and particularly on saline or alkaline soils near lakes and seasonal rivers; rocky bushy maritime hilly places, at elevations up to 1,100 metres.

The ripe fruit are eaten as a snack food.

Plants grow from seed.