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A wiry shrubby herb. It keeps growing from year to year. It can be erect and with many branches or form cushions along the ground 30 cm to 2 m across and 1 m high. The stems arise from a thick woody rootstock. The stems can be hairy. The bark peels on old stems. The leaves are long and oval. They are 2-12 cm long. The leaves are stiff and shiny above and with a few hairs underneath. The flowers are tube shaped and white. They have a scent. They are covered with small curved hairs. The fruit are a rounded berry. They are 102 cm long. They turn orange to yellow. They have dark brown seeds.
Leaf blades 1.8–13(15) × 0.6–5 cm, oblong-elliptic, narrowly elliptic or somewhat oblanceolate, acute to ± obtusely acuminate at the apex, cuneate at the base, slightly coriaceous, ± shiny above, glabrous except for a few hairs on the venation beneath, or puberulous to pubescent on both surfaces; free part of petiole about 3–7(12) mm long; stipules adnate to petiole for up to 3 mm, 6–16 × 4–6 mm, triangular, with midrib raised, narrowly acute.
Calyx appressed-puberulous to pubescent; tube 4 mm long, oblong; limb-tube wider than tube, 1.5 mm long (up to 5 mm long in fruit); lobes 1.2–3 cm × 2.5–5(7.5) mm, linear-oblong or oblong-lanceolate, appressed puberulous on and near the prominent midrib outside, ciliolate, or pubescent all over.
Corolla white; tube 2.5–6.5 cm long, slender, densely covered outside with minute curved hairs which are inflated near the base or appressed pubescent, throat pilose; lobes 4–5, 1.2–3.8 × 1.1–1.5 cm, elliptic, with similar hairs outside.
Flowers fragrant, solitary or 3–several together, sessile, terminal and/or terminating slender axillary branches; bracts closely appressed to calyx and stipules, toothed.
Fruit eventually orange-yellow or cream-coloured, 1–2 × 0.8–1.2 cm, subglobose to ellipsoid, fleshy, ribbed, glabrous and shiny or with minute scattered hairs.
Perennial wiry subshrub, ± erect and much-branched or prostrate and forming cushions 0.3–2 m in diameter and 0.3–1.2 m tall from a thick woody rootstock.
Stems glabrous or with small scattered hairs on the youngest parts or densely pubescent, the bark peeling on the older parts.
Seeds dark brown, irregularly rhomboid, about 3 mm long, sharply angular, with unequal facets, and with a marked hilar pit.
Pollen presenter bearing 2(3) lobes 8 mm long, just exserted to slightly exserted.
Style covered with rather spreading hairs.
