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Dioecious, rigid, erect, thorny shrub, up to 3 m tall, young stems, leaves and calyx densely hirsute with glandular hairs. Leaves herbaceous or rarely semi-succulent, solitary or in clusters, elliptic to obovate, 16-28 mm long. Flowers functionally unisexual, 8-12 mm long, cream-coloured to dirty white, lobes spreading, male flowers narrowly trumpet-shaped with minute style, female flowers tubular with infertile anthers, style 7-10 mm long. Berries nearly spherical, ± 4 mm diam.
Female flower: calyx as in male flower; corolla as in male flower but tube shorter and narrower, 6–8 × 1–1.5 mm and trumpet-shaped; stamens as in male flower but anthers infertile and indehiscent, included in the corolla tube; disk and ovary as in male flower; style 7–10 mm long, exserted; stigma capitate, slightly sulcate at the middle.
Leaves fascicled on stems and spines in clusters of 5–12, subsessile or with a petiole up to 4 mm long; lamina yellowish to greyish-green, herbaceous, sometimes slightly fleshy, 6–28 × 2–8 mm, elliptic or oblanceolate to obovate, apex acute to rounded, densely hirsute as on young stems.
Stems slightly angular; bark ashy-white and densely hirsute when young with simple, short and long glandular hairs, as well as simple and branched eglandular hairs, to dark grey and glabrous with age.
Flowers functionally monoecious, 4–5-merous, erect; pedicels 1–3 mm long, densely hirsute.
Fruit red, 3–5 × 3–4 mm, broadly ovoid to globose.
Rigidly erect, much branched shrub 1–3 m high.
Seeds 2 × 2 mm, ovoid, flattened.
