Shrubs or small trees, 1-4 m tall; terminal bud, twig tips, and branchlets pubescent or glabrescent, hairs ± spreading. Stipules linear-lanceolate, 1.5-3 mm, papery, with a few appressed to spreading hairs, persistent or caducous; petiole 3-10 mm, pubescent, hairs spreading, short; leaf blade variable in shape and size, narrowly elliptic, oblong-elliptic, or obovate, 3.5-15 × 1-5 cm, thinly membranous, abaxially sparsely puberulous, at least along main veins, rarely glabrous, adaxially glabrous or subglabrous, midvein raised abaxially, lateral veins 5-8 pairs, base acute, obtuse, or slightly rounded, cuneate or not, margin finely serrulate, teeth narrow, extended to a fine point, leaf apex acute, sometimes broadly so, tapering or contracting more abruptly to an acumen ca. 1 cm, extreme tip usually acute, mucronate. Flowers usually few in axillary subsessile glomerules, greenish white. Pedicels ca. 1 mm in flower, ca. 5 mm in fruit, articulate at base; bracts ovate, ca. 2 mm, abaxially glabrous or with a few hairs. Sepals 4 or 5, oblong or obovate-oblong, 2-3 mm, outside usually glabrous, less often sparsely shortly hairy in upper half, inside sparsely pubescent, hairs semispreading, short, margin shortly ciliate. Stamens 8; filaments ca. 1 mm, pubescent; anthers ovoid-oblong, 0.5-0.7 mm, with acute apex and connective sometimes extended, glabrous. Disk lobes nearly as long as stamen filament, narrowly triangular, adaxially glabrous, margin ciliate, hairs long, white when dry. Ovary narrowly ovoid, ca. 1 mm or less, sparsely hairy to nearly glabrous below, hairy above; style short, 0.5-1 mm, hairy; stigma globose, 3-lobed, glabrous. Capsule green or yellow, broadly ellipsoid to globose, ca. 1.5 × 1 cm, 3-or 4-angled, fleshy, dried pericarp thin, usually splitting into 3 broadly elliptic valves, outside pale brown, finely longitudinally ribbed and horizontally wrinkled, reddish brown vesicles often visible below surface, inner surface pale yellowish; valves 3, broadly obovate, slightly naviculate. Seeds 3-8, variously reported as white or red when fresh, pale brown when dry, 6-7 mm, ovoid, surface smooth, completely or partially covered by a thin, fleshy, partly fimbriate, yellowish white aril. Fl. Apr, fr. Apr-May.
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