Shrubs, 0.4-3 m tall; stems glabrous. Petiole 0.5-1.8 cm, glabrous; leaf blade drying papery to thinly leathery, grayish olive-green, yellowish green, or occasionally dark brown (Zhang Guicai 488, MO!), sometimes paler below, oblanceolate, narrowly elliptic, or narrowly elliptic-oblong, 5-11 × 1-3.7 cm, glabrous, abaxially with silvery or mottled thickened epidermis, base acute to cuneate, margins flat, apex deltoid, acute, or acuminate; secondary veins 4-8 pairs, not forming a submarginal vein, without domatia; stipules caducous, lanceolate or triangular, interpetiolar, 4-7 × 2.5-5.5 mm, glabrous, 2-lobed for 1/10-1/4, lobes narrowly triangular to linear, sometimes gland-tipped. Inflorescences terminal or often to pseudoaxillary, cymose-paniculiform, few to several flowered, glabrous, sessile to pedunculate; peduncle to 0.7 cm; branched portion corymbiform or broadly pyramidal, 1-3 × 1-1.5 cm, with 1 or 2 pairs of developed secondary axes; bracts triangular to linear-lanceolate, 0.5-1.5 mm; pedicels to 2 mm. Flowers subsessile and pedicellate in small dichotomous cymes. Calyx glabrous; hypanthium portion obconic, 1-1.5 mm; limb 0.5-1 mm, lobed shallowly or for up to 1/5; lobes broadly triangular. Corolla white, tubular, glabrous outside; tube 3-3.5 mm, in throat white villous; lobes triangular-oblong, 1-1.7 mm. Drupes red, oblong-ellipsoid or subglobose, 6-7 × 3-6 mm, with pedicels to 10 mm; pyrenes shallowly 3-or 4-ribbed. Fl. Apr-Sep, fr. Aug-Dec.