Shrubs or small trees, dioecious, to 6 m tall, spinescent. Branchlets alternate, rarely subopposite, gray-brown or yellow-brown, terminating in a spine; buds small, with few scales, glabrous. Leaves alternate or fascicled on short shoots; stipules caducous; petiole 5-10 mm; leaf blade narrowly elliptic or elliptic, rarely lanceolate or oblanceolate-elliptic, 5-12 × 2-5.5 cm, papery or thinly papery, both surfaces glabrous, lateral veins 4-6 pairs, base cuneate, margin hooked incurved-crenate, apex caudate-acuminate, rarely acute. Flowers yellow-green, unisexual, 4-merous. Pedicels 5-9 mm. Male flowers 2 to few in leaf axils or on short shoots or fascicled in lower parts of annual branches; petals present. Female flowers few to 10 in fascicles; styles 2-or 3-fid or nearly cleft to half. Drupe black at maturity, obovoid-globose, 6-7 mm, ca. 5 mm in diam., with 2(or 3) stones, with persistent calyx tube at base; fruiting pedicel 6-10 mm. Seeds dark brown, oblong-obovoid, abaxially with short margined furrow extending over 1/4 of length, fissured at upper part. Fl. Apr-May, fr. Jun-Sep.
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