Open, graceful shrub or small, slender, straggling, rounded tree to 20 m tall, occasionally vine-like; stems to 20 inches d.b.h.; bark white; branches and branch-lets tetragonal or subterete, often striate, glabrous, brownish, or the young shoots drying dark; leaf-scars large, borne on corky large sterigmata. Leaves opposite, lanceolate or oblong to narrowly elliptic, 4-17.5 cm long, 2.4-7.7 cm wide, apically blunt or subacute, rarely apiculate or emarginate, entire, cuneately narrowed to the base, the margins recurved to enclose a pair of elongate dark basal glands, firmly chartaceous or subcoriaceous, dark-green and shiny above, lighter and shiny and punctate beneath, glabrous on both surfaces, the midrib often orange-brown above and light-brown or pale greenish-white beneath and (when fresh) suffused below with buff,-minor venation delicate, sparse, often obscure; petioles 0.3-2.4 cm long, glabrous. Racemes axillary or terminating axillary branchlets, erect or pendent, 3-38 cm long, 1-1.5 cm wide, densely many-flowered, un-branched or rarely furcate; peduncles slender, 0.5-4.5 cm long, glabrate; rachis slender, grass-green, glabrate or glabrous; pedicels slender, 1-2.5 mm long, glabrate; bracts occasionally present, foliaceous, lanceolate, to 2.5 cm long and 1 cm wide, glabrous on both surfaces; prophylls setaceous, 1-2 mm long, glabrate. Flowers fragrant; calyx campanulate or cyathiform, 3-4.5 mm long, mostly glabrate outside, the tube pale-green, apically subtruncate, minutely apiculate or obsoletely 5-repand-dentate, obscurely ciliate; corolla white or cream-colored, 5-8 mm long, infundibular, the tube about twice as long as the calyx, tomentose apically, villous at the throat, the limb 5-lobed, 4-5 mm wide, lobed 1/32/3 of its length, the lobes obovate, the filaments ca. 0.5 mm long, the anthers ca. 1 mm long, the staminode rudimentary; pistil ca. 3.5 mm long, the style ca. 2 mm long, stigma bilobed, ovary obovate. Fruit reddish-green or yellow to orange or red, finally shiny black when mature and in drying, oblong or globose-oblong to obovate or subglobose, 6-12 mm long, 5-10 mm wide, glabrous, pyrenes 1-celled; fruiting-pedicels to 3 mm long; fruiting-calyx cupuliform or eventually patelliform, herbaceous or indurated, to 3 mm long and 4 mm wide, 5-angled, glabrous, apically subtruncate, 5-apiculate or eventually splitting irregularly and erose.
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