Tree or shrub 1-20 m tall; crown broad and dense; trunk to 76 cm in diameter basally; bark dark gray-brown or nearly black, furrowed and roughened in age; branchlets and twigs slender, acutely or obtusely tetragonal, buff or brownish, often dark, striate and more or less lenticellate, sparsely strigillose to glabrous, more or less shiny; nodes somewhat ampliate, often oblique; leaf-scars large, borne on short, conspicuous sterigmata. Leaves opposite or approximate with internodes to 1 cm long between members of a pair, lanceolate or oblong-lanceo-late to elliptic, 4.5-21 cm long, 2.1-6.5 cm wide, apically acuminate attenuate or subacuminate (rarely obtuse or emarginate on stuifted leaves), entire or rarely with a few, short, acute teeth near the apex, basally acute or cuneate with 1-3 pairs of small discoid or oblong glands, glabrous and sometimes sparsely punctate on both surfaces, chartaceous or thin-chartaceous, firm, when fresh uniformly bright-or dark-green on both surfaces or rich-green above and paler beneath, the midrib sometimes sparsely and minutely strigillose-puberulent above; petioles slender or stout, 1-2.5 cm long, not ampliate at the base, glabrous or sparsely and obscurely pulverulent-puberulent. Racemes numerous in the uppermost leaf-axils or terminal, often crowded at the tips of the branchlets, elongate, 10-45 cm long, 1-1.8 cm wide, simple or occasionally with 1-3 pairs of lateral branches to ca. 10 cm long, densely many-flowered, recurved and nutant or pendent; peduncles slender, 1.5-6 cm long, glabrous or sparsely strigillose; rachis slender, glabrous; pedicels slender, spreading, 1-3.5 mm long, becoming 6 mm in fruit, glabrous or sparsely strigillose; bractlets few, linear, to 5 mm long, glabrate; prophylls sessile setaceous, to 1-2 mm long. Flowers very fragrant, calyx campanulate or tubular-campanulate, 2-3 mm long, ca. 2 mm wide, strongly 5-angled in cross-section, sinuately 5-dentate and ciliolate apically, glabrous except for the puberulent apex; corolla white, yellowish-white or greenish-white to cream-color or creamy-buff, tubular-campanulate, usually about twice as long as the calyx, 5-8 mm long, the tube more greenish-white than the limb, glabrous outside, pubescent within, the limb ca. 5 mm wide, 5-lobed, the lobes sub-equal spreading, sub-equal ca. 2 mm long, oblong, rounded, pubescent within, glabrous outside; stamens slightly ex-serted; style and ovary glabrous; fruiting-calyx campanulate, herbaceous, to 3 mm long and 5 mm wide, glabrous, its rim spreading, subentire or more or less obscurely 5-apiculate, becoming obtusely 5-lobed or-split in age. Fruit orange to reddish or pale-reddish and very showy when fresh, drying black or purplish-black to bluish and wrinkled, oblong or oblong-spherical, 2-lobed, 6-7 mm long, ca. 6 mm wide, glabrous, extremely shiny, fleshy; pyrenes sub-meniscoidal, 5-6 mm long, 3-3.5 mm wide, smooth.
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