Trees to 12 m tall. Trunk to 35 cm d.b.h., bark black to brownish black. Branches grayish black; young shoots yellowish green. Winter buds slender, 3--6 mm, densely appressed pale yellowish pubescent. Petiole often blackish, 6--10 mm, ± articulate near base; leaf blade oblong, 7.5--17 X 3.5--7 cm, thinly leathery, glabrous, drying green, base cuneate, apex acuminate, lateral veins 8--11 per side, reticulate veinlets slender and raised on both surfaces. Male flowers solitary, cymose, or shortly paniculate, appressed pubescent, rarely only 1 flower fertile; pedicel slender, 2--3 mm; calyx bowl-shaped, outside glabrous, inside densely yellow strigose; calyx lobes 4, ca. 2 X 2 mm, apex rounded; corolla white, urn-shaped, 7--8 mm, glabrous; corolla lobes 4, reflexed, ca. 2 mm; stamens 16. Female flowers not seen. Fruit solitary. Fruiting pedicel 3--4(--8) mm. Fruiting calyx ± woody, reflexed between lobes, ± square, ca. 2 cm wide, outside thinly pubescent, inside densely strigose; lobes 4, spreading, subtriangular. Berries orange-yellow, depressed globose, 1.4--3 cm in diam., 6-locular(?), glabrous but appressed brown hirtellate around mucro, apex apiculate. Seeds dark brown, laterally compressed, oblong, 1.5--2 cm. Fl. Apr-Aug, fr. Aug-Oct.
Evergreen broad-leaved mixed forests, thickets, along streams, valleys, slopes; at low or medium elevations.