Erect or spreading shrub to 2 m. Branchlets stout, rough with raised leaf scars and spinescent stipules. Leaves rather crowded, linear-terete, often broadened upwards, acute, mostly 1–6 cm long, succulent; stipules triangular on swollen, oblique bases, to 1 mm long, persistent. Flowers solitary, axillary. Male flowers: pedicels 1–3 mm long, recurved; calyx 1.5–3 mm long, the lobes shallow; stamens 20–60 in 3–4 rows, covering disc. Female flowers: pedicels to 1.5 mm long, erect or spreading; calyx 1–2 mm long, divided to ½ into broad lobes, the margins scarious; carpels 5–8; stigmas 1–2 mm long, ±petaloid. Fruiting carpels obovate-elliptic, 2.5–3.5 mm long, ±succulent, orange. Seed rounded, 1.5 mm long, with transverse ridges, dark red-brown; aril up to ½ length of seed, lobed.
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