Spreading shrubs 1-2 m tall, rarely arborescent. Stems smooth, dark grey, with pale reddish wood; side branches lenticellate, numerous, short, bearing spurs which produce leaves and flowers. Leaves deciduous, being shed just before flowers appear (soon wilting after being picked), elliptic, 2-4 cm long and 1-1.5 cm broad, apex obtuse to acute, base acute or rounded, margin shallowly serrulate, the teeth mucronulate, shiny, distinctly reticulate; petiole 2 mm; stipules intrapetiolar, fused, bifid with apices filiform. Flowers sweet scented, solitary or rarely 2 close together, on short spurs; pedicels filiform, 1-1.5 cm long at anthesis, firm, wiry and up to 2 cm, red and recurved in fruit, articulated in lower quarter. Sepals ovate, convex, c. 5 mm long, green at anthesis, becoming c. 16 mm long and red in fruit, at first enclosing young drupelets, spreading when ripe. Petals yellow, orbicular, clawed, about 8 mm. Stamens c. 50, with filaments 3 mm long; anthers biporose, 1.5 mm long. Carpels 5, attached basally to receptacle; styles fused, slender, apices free, recurved, filiform with small discoid stigmas. Drupelets oblong-globose, 1 cm long, black. Flowering in spring.
Spreading shrub, 1-2 m high. Flowers solitary, pedicels recurved, 20-30 mm long, articulated below centre with upper part often forming an angle with lower part. Sepals 10-15 mm long in fruit. Flowers yellow.