Shrubs or trees, evergreen, 2-10 m tall; bark gray-white, smooth. Branchlets gray-brown, terete, smooth, glabrous; lenticels absent; leaf scars slightly raised, semicircular; current year’s branchlets longitudinally angular and sulcate, glabrous; terminal buds convex, scales glabrous, ciliate. Stipules deltoid, minute, apically acute; petiole 5-9 mm, rugose abaxially, glabrous, longitudinally sulcate adaxially; leaf blade abaxially greenish, adaxially olivaceous-brown, shiny, ovate or obovate-oblong, 3-7(-8) × (1-)1.5-3.5(-4) cm, thickly leathery, both surfaces glabrous, midvein slightly raised abaxially, flat adaxially, lateral veins 7 or 8 pairs, slightly raised, evident or obscure on both surfaces, anastomosing near margin, reticulate veins absent, base obtuse, rarely rounded, margin entire, apex abruptly caudate-acuminate, acumen 6-13 mm, often falcate. Inflorescences: cymes, fasciculate, axillary on second year’s branchlets; bracts deltoid, often tricuspidate; flowers white, 4-merous. Male inflorescences: cymes of order 2 or 3, 3-5-flowered, glabrous; peduncles 3-8 mm; secondary axis 1-2 mm or shorter; pedicels 2-8(-15) mm; bracteoles 2, basal, or absent; calyx patelliform, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., deeply 4-lobed, lobes deltoid, ciliate; corolla rotate, 4-5 mm in diam., petals oblong, ca. 2 × 1.5 mm, basally slightly connate, margin entire or erose, ciliate or not; stamens shorter than petals, anthers oblong; rudimentary ovary subglobose, ca. 1 mm in diam., apex slightly lobed. Female inflorescences: 1-flowered cymes; pedicels (2-)4-7 mm, glabrous; bracteoles 2, submedian; calyx and corolla as in male flowers; staminodes ca. 1/2 as long as petals, sterile anthers sagittate; ovary ovoid, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., stigma thickly deltoid, puberulent. Fruit globose, ca. 4 mm in diam.; persistent calyx explanate, ca. 2.5 mm in diam., 4-lobed, lobes ciliate; persistent stigma thickly discoid; pyrenes 4, ovoid-trigonous, ca. 2.5 mm, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., abaxially slightly longitudinally raised, 3-striate, not sulcate, laterally smooth, endocarp leathery. Fl. May-Jun, fr. Aug-Oct.
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