Shrubs, to 5 m tall. Branches slender, forming both long and short shoots, with sparse to dense red-brown or dark brown bristles or sparsely so, rarely a single prickle at nodes. Petiole 3-10 cm, slender, with prickles at base; petiolules very short; leaflets 5, obovate or oblong-obovate, 2-5 × 0.8-2 cm, papery, abaxially subglabrous, adaxially with scattered bristles on midvein and veins, secondary veins 3 or 4 pairs, conspicuous, base cuneate, margin serrulate above middle, apex acute. Inflorescence borne in axils of leaves on short shoots, a simple umbel of sometimes 2 or 3 umbels clustered together; peduncles 2-3 cm, densely bristly, then glabrous; pedicels 5-10 mm, slender, glabrous. Calyx with 5 teeth, glabrous. Ovary (4 or)5-carpellate; styles united, forming a column. Fruit black at maturity, globose, ca. 5 mm in diam. Fl. Jul, fr. Sep.
Scrub fields, forests, roadsides, stream banks; at elevations up to 800 metres in the east of its range and up to 2,000 metres in the west.
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