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Female flowers: pedicels shorter and stouter than in the male; sepals ± as in the male, but early caducous; disk glands 5, free or united in pairs, transversely ellipsoid, fleshy, ± smooth; ovary 0.75 mm in diameter, sessile, ellipsoid-subglobose, 3–4(5)-locular, smooth; styles 3–4(5), 0.67 mm long, free, ± erect at first, later spreading or recurved, bifid, the stigmas filiform, velvety.
Male flowers: pedicels 2 mm long, capillary; sepals 5, c. 1 × 1 mm, subequal, elliptic-ovate to suborbicular, concave, pale greenish-yellow; disk glands 5, free, turbinate, verruculose, fleshy; stamens 5, free, 3(2) short, 2(3) long, the longer less than 1 mm long, anthers minute, ellipsoid, ± vertically-held, longitudinally dehiscent.
Leaf blades 1.5–8 × 1–4.5 cm, broadly ovate to ovate-lanceolate, usually subacute or obtuse, sometimes shortly acuminate, cuneate, rounded or truncate at the base, thinly to firmly chartaceous, dark green and shiny above, paler and duller beneath; lateral nerves in 6–16 pairs, slightly prominent above and beneath.
Flowers malodorous, fasciculate on leafless often zigzag lateral shoots, often with 1 female and 1–3 male flowers per fascicle, rarely the female flowers solitary on leafy shoots; bracts minute.
A scandent shrub with numerous stems from the base, or small tree up to 7.5 m tall, monoecious, evergreen, completely glabrous, spiny; branches arched, pendulous almost to the ground.
Lateral leafy shoots to 25 cm long, floriferous shoots rarely more than 10 cm long, the latter borne in fascicles on short shoots co-axillary with the former.
Scale leaves 3–4 mm long, triangular-lanceolate, spinescent, decurved, purplish-brown; stipules broadly triangular, otherwise similar to the scale leaves.
Fruit 2–3 × 3–4 mm, subglobose, ± smooth, bacciform, with a fleshy pericarp, green at first, later ripening through pink to reddish-brown or black.
A shrub or woody climber. The stems can be 10 cm across. The spur shoots have sharp spines. The fruit is a small black spine.
Foliage leaves distichous; petioles 2–5 mm long; stipules 2 mm long, subulate, chaffy, brownish.
Seeds 1.3 × 1 × 1 mm, triquetrous, minutely reticulate, shiny, reddish-brown.
Twigs dark brown, with scattered corky lenticels.
Bark greyish-brown, smooth.
Bole to 20 cm in diameter.
