Shrubs to 3 m tall. Branchlets brown or reddish brown, terete, slender, prickly; prickles basally broadened and flattened; young shoots brown-yellow to purplish red, with soft hairs and intermixed glandular hairs or glabrous. Leaves simple; petiole 1–2 cm, slender, with soft hairs and intermixed glandular hairs or glabrous, with minute prickles; stipules linear, 5–8 mm, pilose, with intermixed glandular hairs; blade narrowly ovate to ovate-lanceolate, 4–7 × 2–4.5 cm, both surfaces soft hairy, more densely so or with glandular hairs along veins, sparsely pilose in age, base somewhat cordate or subtruncate, margin 3-, rarely 5-lobed or incised-lobed, irregularly doubly serrate or incised-serrate, with stalked glands, apex acuminate. Inflorescences terminal or axillary, 1-flowered, ca. 1.5 cm in diam. Pedicel 5–10(–15) mm, soft hairy or glabrous, with stalked glands. Calyx soft hairy, abaxially with stalked glands; tube campanulate; sepals lanceolate, 7–10 × 2–4 mm, apex caudate. Petals white, ovate-oblong or oblong, 8–10 × 4–7 mm, nearly as long as sepals, glabrous, apex obtuse or subacute. Stamens many, shorter than petals; filaments broad, complanate. Pistils shorter than stamens; ovary glabrous, with sparse, glandular hairs. Aggregate fruit red, ovoid-globose, 1(–2) cm in diam., glabrous or with sparse, stalked glands; pyrenes rugose. Fl. Mar–May, fr. May–Jun.