Male flowers: pedicels 2–4 mm long, slender, glabrous, jointed at the base; buds less than 1 mm across, conic-quadrangular, apiculate, truncate at the base, glabrous; calyx lobes 4, 2 × 1.5 mm broadly ovate, subacute, pale greenish-cream; extrastaminal disk glands c. 10, minute, rounded, tipped with a few hairs; interstaminal glands much shorter than the stamens, truncate, each tipped with a hair tuft; stamens 30–35, 10–12 outer, the rest central, 1 mm long, anthers minute, yellow; sometimes the whole centre of the male flower replaced by the shiny, black, quandrangular sclerotium of a fungus, ? Sclerotinia sp., in which case the buds are swollen to 3 × 3 mm.
Female flowers: pedicels 3–6 mm long, extending a little in fruit, sparingly appressed-pubescent, jointed below the middle; calyx lobes 4, 2 × 1.5 mm, broadly ovate, subacute or obtuse, subglabrous, pale green; disk 1.5–3 mm in diameter, urceolate, thin, shallowly 3-lobed, sparingly ciliate; ovary 1–1.5 mm in diameter, 3-lobed, glabrous, subglabrous or evenly pubescent; styles 3, 1.5 mm long, shortly united at the base, spreading, stigmas proximally subentire, distally laciniate.
Leaf blades 1–7.5 × 0.5–2.5 cm, elliptic-lanceolate, acutely long-acuminate apically, coarsely glandular serrate-dentate to subentire on the margins, cuneate at the base, membranous, sparingly pubescent on both surfaces, more evenly so along the midrib and main nerves, drying dark green; lateral nerves in 3–4 pairs, ascending, not or weakly looped, scarcely prominent above or beneath.
Female inflorescences 2–3.5 cm long, racemose, 1–4-flowered, pedunculate, evenly to sparingly appressed-pubescent; bracts 1 mm long, narrowly lanceolate, pubescent.
Male inflorescences 1–1.5 cm long, racemose, few-flowered, pedunculate, appressed-pubescent; bracts 0.7 mm long, linear-setaceous.
Petioles 1–5 mm long, sometimes with 1–2 conic-hemispheric yellowish stipelliform glands at the apex.
Stipules 0.5 mm long, conic-cylindric, not aculeate, scarcely becoming hardened, orange-brown.
Seeds c. 4 mm in diameter, foveolate-reticulate-muricate, aril orange.
A slender shrub up to c. 2.5 m tall, with arching spreading branches.
Fruit 3–4 × 7–8 mm, 3-lobed, glabrous or subglabrous, pale green.
Young growth evenly pubescent.
Twigs dark greyish-brown.