Herbs, sprawling to climbing, perennial, with extensive stout, woody, and red rhizomes; stems to 1-2.5 m, often fascicled, quadrangular with ± sharp angles, somewhat retrorsely aculeolate or glabrous. Leaves in whorls of 4-6, shortly petiolate to subsessile; blade drying papery to subleathery, lanceolate, lanceolate-oblong, or elliptic-oblong, 3-10 × 0.5-3.5 cm, glabrous or mostly along lower midrib and margins retrorsely aculeolate, base acute, apex acute; lateral veins 3 or 4 pairs, pinnate. Inflorescences thyrsoid, leaflike and many-flowered cymes terminal and axillary from upper stem nodes; axes ± retrorsely aculeolate; peduncles up to 50 mm with bracts narrowly elliptic, 2-5 mm; pedicels (0.75-)1.5-8(-12) mm. Ovary ca. 0.8 mm, glabrous. Corolla yellow to greenish yellow, rotate-funnelform, glabrous; tube ca. 1 mm; limb 3-4.5 mm in diam.; lobes lanceolate, ca. 1 mm, shortly acuminate. Anthers large, 0.5-0.6(-0.8) mm, straight. Mericarp berry black, 3.5-4 × 4-4.5 mm. Fl. Jun-Aug, fr. Jul-Sep.
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