Perennial monoecious prostrate to erect or suberect canescent suffrutex. Stems firm, robust, branched, angular, densely covered with adpressed thick stiff hairs, up to about 0.5 m rarely 1 m, long, the older parts in the grooves between the angles with thin adpressed white hairs and aculeate with thick hard white setae, ultimately glabrescent but persistently white or canescent. Leaves stiff and thick, canescent, ovate in outline, truncate or slightly decurrent at the base, rounded at the apex, with an irregularly and sparsely dentate or dentate-lobulate margin, very scabrid-setose turning punctate-scabrid, 3-6 cm long and wide, entire to crenulate-lobulate to more or less 3-lobed with ovate obtuse lobes of which the central one is the longest, separated by rounded sinuses; petioles rigid, firm setose-scabrid, 1-5 cm long. Tendrils 0. Male flowers subsessile or on pedicels up to about 1 cm long, usually solitary; receptacle obconic-campanulate, densely canescent-villous, 4-6 mm long, sepals triangular, about 2 mm long, hairy like the receptacle; petals hirsute outside, about 4 mm long. Female flowers solitary, peduncles up to 1 cm long; ovary oblong, densely covered with rigid thick bulbous-based setae. Fruit ovoid to ellipsoid, concolorous, 4-6 cm long, 2.5-4 cm in diam., rather sparsely covered with soft flattened, 5-6 mm long spines which end in a bulbous-based mucro. Seeds 6-7 mm long.
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Dioecious, roughly hairy, perennial shrublet, up to 1 m tall, with woody rootstock and grey-green to whitish stems, without tendrils. Leaves ovate, up to 55 mm long, palmately 3-or 5-lobed. Flowers yellow, male 1-4 per axil, up to 7.5 mm long, female solitary, up to 5.5 mm long. Ripe fruit ellipsoidal or globose, 25-45 mm long, yellow, covered with prickles up to 4.5 mm long.
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