Trees to ca. 6 m tall. Bark asperous. Branches gray and black; young branchlets yellowish brown, glabrous except for some hairs at base. Winter bud scales outside densely appressed pubescent. Petiole 5--10 mm, minutely pubescent when young; leaf blade elliptic, elliptic-lanceolate, or oblong-lanceolate, 8--12 X 2.4--4.5 cm, thinly leathery, both surfaces glabrous, drying gray-green when young, darker when older, base obtuse to subrounded, margin slightly revolute, apex acuminate, lateral veins 5 or 6 per side, reticulate veinlets dense and conspicuously raised on both surfaces. Male flowers with calyx lobes 4; corolla urn-shaped, 7--8 mm, both surfaces with hairs; stamens 16; filaments pubescent. Female flowers solitary, sometimes grouped on short racemelike lateral branches; calyx lobes 4; corolla broadly urn-shaped, ca. 5 mm. Fruiting pedicel 1--1.8(--2.2) cm, pubescent. Fruiting calyx deeply divided, glabrescent; lobes 4, spreading, ovate-lanceolate, ca. 1.5 X 1.1 cm, papery, reticulately veined. Berries globose, ca. 2.5 cm in diam., densely strigose, glabrescent. Fl. Apr-May, fr. Aug-Oct.