Bushes or slender shrubs, often leaning on other plants, 1-4 m high; stems 8-9 mm in diameter basally, covered with light-brown, rather shreddy, thin layers of bark, unarmed, the upper portions appressed-strigillose or glabrescent; branches many, opposite, the lower branches 6-7 cm from the ground. Leaves with a slight odor of cucumbers, normally decussate-opposite; the blades stiff, narrowly lanceo-late or ovate-oblong to ovate or elliptic, 1.5-6 cm long and 1-3 cm wide, acute or acuminate apically, acute or obtuse basally, crenate, rugose and scabrous above, hispidulous-strigose along the venation beneath, varying to appressed-strigillose or even glabrescent; petioles short, slender. Heads 1-1.5 cm wide, not elongating or scarcely so in fruit; peduncles equaling or shorter than the subtending leaves; bractlets green, large, conspicuous, ovate to lanceolate or broadly ovate, the lower branchlets to 1 cm long and 8 mm wide, subinvolucrate. Flowers fragrant or dis-agreeably pungent; corolla hypocrateriform, mostly white with a pale-yellow center, sometimes pink or tinged with lavender, often becoming bluish in age, the tube ca. 7 mm long, the limb ca. 2 mm wide. Drupes dark-purple or black, fleshy, edible.
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