Tree or shrub, 1-4 m high, branches flexible, grey to yellow brown, lenticels white, prominent; glabrous or hairy. Leaves alternate or crowded on side shoots, petiolate, dark green, thin, drying papery, pubescent, elliptic to obovate. Flowers solitary, corymbose or racemose, pedicellate. Sepals 4, pale mauve or purple-flushed, free, glabrous to pubescent, margins of inner sepals pubescent. Petals absent. Stamens usually 5. Ovary cylindric. Fruit cylindrical, verrucose, glabrous to pubescent. Seeds embedded in a scarlet powdery matrix, reniform; verrucose black to brown testa.
Leaves alternate or crowded on short lateral spurs; lamina 1.2–3.5 x 0.4–1.5 cm., elliptic or oblanceolate, apex rounded or emarginate, apiculate, cuneate at the base, glabrous on both sides or sparsely pubescent; petiole up to 5 mm. long, pubescent, at least on the upper side.
Sepals c. 0.9 x 0.8 cm., very broadly ovate, subacute at the apex, subequal, the upper and lower very concave, pubescent on the margins, sometimes pubescent outside; lateral sepals pubescent on the margins.
Flowers solitary in the axils of the leaves but becoming racemose in appearance on the short side shoots; pedicels up to 2 cm. long, glabrous or pubescent.
Pedicels and all young parts glabrous. Leaves present. Pedicel slender, longer than 10 mm. Nectary with recurved neck. Flowers whitish green.
Androgynophore c. 2 cm. long, slightly declinate, with a basal flask-shaped nectary c. 7 x 3.5 mm. having a recurved neck and dentate mouth.
Seeds c. 2.5 mm. in diam., sub-reniform, dark brown, with concentric rugose ridges, embedded in a bright orange or scarlet, powdery matrix.
Ovary narrowly cylindric, glabrous or minutely puberulous; ovules numerous, on 2 placentas; stigma sessile, capitate.
Small shrub 1–2 m. tall with stiff, greyish-brown branches, glabrous or occasionally with a short, coarse pubescence.
Fruit 3–4 x 0.4 cm., narrowly cylindric, sub-torulose, minutely verrucose, many-seeded.
Stamens 5–6, filaments c. 1 cm. long, glabrous; anthers 3 x 1.5 mm., oblong.
Gynophore c. 1 cm. long, glabrous or minutely puberulous.
Petals 0.