Climbing shrub to 12 m. or small straggling tree or bush 3–6 m. tall; young ± slender leafy shoots brownish red, lenticellate, densely covered with spreading pale brownish pubescence; main stems leafless with purplish brown peeling epidermis, up to 10 cm. in diameter (fide Ament & Magogo 57), striate, pubescent but at length glabrous or with scattered pubescence and often densely woolly buds in axes of fallen leaves.. Leaf-blades ovate to ± oblong-elliptic, 3–15 cm. long, 2.5–8.5(–10) cm. wide, narrowly distinctly acuminate at the apex or ? abnormally rounded, truncate to rounded or subcordate at the base, usually entire but ± repand or obscurely toothed in some southern specimens, thin, sometimes discolorous, thinly velvety above with very obvious multicellular ± adpressed hairs and more thickly similarly velvety beneath but finely so in both cases; petiole slender, 0.9–5 cm. long, similarly pubescent to the stems.. Flowers very sweetly scented in extensive ± dense panicles of cymes 6–10 cm. long and wide, the axes similarly pubescent to the stems; bracts linear to lanceolate, 3–8 mm. long; pedicels to 1 mm. long.. Calyx obconic, 2.2 mm. long, densely adpressed white pubescent; lobes short, very rounded or triangular, 0.5–1 mm. long, less pubescent and drying brownish.. Corolla white or yellow-green; tube 3 mm. long, ± glabrous; lobes rounded, 1–1.5 mm. long and wide, densely adpressed pubescent outside.. Fruit black, ellipsoid or ± globose, 6–7 mm. long, 5–6 mm. wide, ± minutely glandular, sitting in a ± flat or shallow pubescent persistent calyx.
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