Profusely branching armed shrubs to as much as 4 m. tall, the rather smooth branches glabrous, armed with 3-pronged barbs as much as 2 cm. long. Leaves crowded on spur branches in the axils of the barbs, the blades coriaceous, evergreen, narrowly to broadly obovate, apically obtuse and apiculate, scantily spinulose, basally cuneate, subsessile, 1.5-7.0 cm. long, 0.8-2.4 mm. broad, lustrous above, pruinose, papillose and often resin-dotted below, the venation reticulate, the alate petioles 0.5-4.5 mm. long. Flowers subglobose, orangish, in bracteate simple or scantily branched racemes terminating the spur shoots; bracts lanceolate, caudate, 2-5 mm. long, the pedicels 3-15 mm. long, usually terminated by 1-2(-3) bracteoles (prophylls) subtending the calyx, the bracteoles deltoid to oblong, acute to acumi-nate, shorter than the sepals; sepals in 2-3 whorls of 3, the outermost deltoid, acute, 1-2 mm. long, the median and innermost broadly obovate to orbicular, obtuse or rounded, 3-5 mm. long, 2-4 mm. broad, glabrous, obscurely nerved; petals 6, broadly obovate, unguiculate, obtuse, or somewhat emarginate, often cucullate and laterally involute, 3-5 mm. long; stamens 6, 3-4 mm. long, the connectives truncate, the anthers bilocular, valvate; ovary ellipsoid, 2-to 4-ovulate, the stigma capitate, subsessile, the style to 1 mm. long (in Panama). Fruit baccate, blackish with a pruinose bloom, ellipsoid, 6-10 mm. long, the style and stigma to 1.5 mm. long.
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