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Female flowers: pedicels 1 mm long, extending to 5 mm in fruit, stouter than in the male and broadening at the apex, dull purplish; sepals 5, 1.5 × 0.5 mm, accrescent to up to 4 × 2 mm in fruit, oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, white with a broad cream-coloured, greenish or reddish median band; disk 0.4 mm in diameter, shallowly cupular, slightly undulate-lobulate on the margin; ovary 0.5 mm in diameter, sessile, 6-lobed, subglobose, smooth, cream-coloured, sometimes reddish-tinged; styles 3, united at the base, 0.4 mm long, erect, 2-lobed, stigmas strongly recurved.
Leaf blades 0.5–1.8 × 0.1–0.7 cm, elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, acute, subacute or obtuse, usually mucronulate, rounded-cuneate at the base, margin somewhat thickened, subentire to minutely denticulate, membranaceous to chartaceous, yellowish-green to dark green above, glaucous beneath, closing up when touched; lateral nerves in 7–12 pairs, indistinct to slightly prominent above, fairly prominent beneath.
Male flowers: pedicels 1–2 mm long, slender; sepals 5, 2 × 1 mm, oblong, rounded, white with a cream-coloured median stripe; disk glands 5, free, 0.25 mm across, transversely ovoid, distinctly tuberculate, creamy-white; stamens 3, filaments connate into a stout column 1.5 mm high, anthers 0.5 × 0.25 mm, ellipsoid, ± free, sessile, vertically held, longitudinally dehiscent, yellow.
Seeds 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 mm, segmentiform, brown or buff, with 14–20 fine longitudinal lines on the dorsal facet, 12–14 concentric arcs on each ventral facet, and innumerable finer transverse striae between them.
Scale leaves 1.5–2 mm long, triangular-lanceolate, acute; stipules 2.5–3 × 1 mm, ovate-lanceolate, irregularly denticulate to subentire, strongly auriculate adaxially, reddish-brown.
A stiffly erect, sometimes tufted, woody herb or small shrub up to 120 cm tall, usually unbranched at base, completely glabrous, monoecious.
Male flowers in 2–3-flowered cymules in the middle axils of the lateral shoots, female flowers solitary in the most distal axils.
Foliage leaves distichous; petioles 0.5–0.75 mm long; stipules 1–1.2 mm long, linear-lanceolate, buff, soon darkening to brown.
Fruit 2–2.5 × 3.5–4 mm, depressed6-lobed, subglobose, ± smooth, yellow-green to bright red.
Lead shoots terete, often purplish-grey; lateral shoots up to 15 cm long.
