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A shrub or tree. It can be 2-20 m tall. The trunk and branches have sharp spines. Young trees have spines in groups of 2-3 on the trunk. These can be 2 cm long. They occur as 2 or 3 together. The bark is grey and smooth. It loses its leaves for a short time. Old leaves turn red. The leaves are opposite or in rings or 3 or 4. They are narrowly oval and 3-14 cm long. The tip is long but blunt. The leaves are papery and dark above but paler underneath. The flowers are white to yellow. They are in loose heads that hang down. The flowers are small and tube shaped and about 25 occur in a group. They are greenish-yellow. The fruit hang in loose bunches. They have 2 lobes and a notch at the tip. They are about 2 cm long. There are 2 seeds in each.
Leaves not restricted to stem apex; blades 3–14.5 × 1.5–6 cm, elliptic, oblong-elliptic, occasionally broadly elliptic or narrowly elliptic, acuminate or less often obtuse to acute at apex, rounded or obtuse to cuneate at the base, leaves on coppice shoots or young shoots smaller and rounded, leaves on saplings very much narrower than mature foliage, papery to subcoriaceous, strongly discolorous, tertiary nerves obscure in dry specimens; domatia pit-like, ciliate to densely hairy; petiole 2–15 mm long; stipules sheathing at the base, 2–3 mmlong, bearing a linear lobe 1–3 mm long, sometimes rather corky when old, pubescent inside.
Flowers 5-merous, borne in pedunculate 3–25(40)-flowered cymes; peduncles 4–15 mm long, glabrous or sparsely and unequally pubescent, inflorescence branches sometimes reduced; pedicels 0.5–4(7) mm long, glabrous or sparsely pubescent; limb-tube ± obsolete; lobes triangular or linear, unequal, up to 1.5 mm long.
Corolla white or yellow-green, acute in bud; tube 2–4.25 mm long, 1–2 mm wide, glabrous to sparsely hairy inside; lobes 1.5–4 × 1.5–2 mm wide at base, narrowly triangular to triangular or oblong-ovate, shortly apiculate, puberulous at margins outside.
Pyrenes 12–14 × 7–8 mm, ellipsoid with ventral face flattened, scarcely or distinctly curved, truncate at point of attachment with crest running from point of attachment to apex, sometimes not well developed, somewhat rugulose.
Shrubs or trees 1.5–20 m tall, glabrous; trunks, coppice shoots and young branches usually armed with ternate or occasionally paired spines; bark greyish.
Fruit slightly longer than wide, subequal or wider than long, 13–25 × 14–20 mm, bilobed and indented at the apex.
Pollen presenter as broad as long, c. 1 mm across.
Style shortly exceeding the tube.
