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Shrub or small tree 1–6 m tall with slender spreading branches, sometimes ± scandent; shoots pubescent when young, becoming glabrous, with ± lenticellate grey-brown bark on older branches; older branches with supra-axillary ± opposite paired spines 6–25 mm long, and often bearing leaves and flowers on brachyblasts (short condensed nodular lateral shoots), the lateral shoots bearing only one pair of leaves or the apical portions of otherwise normal shoots can have the internodes much condensed and similarly bear a pair of leaves.
Leaf blades 3–10.5 × 1.2–7 cm, ovate to elliptic or oblong-elliptic, long-acuminate at the apex, the actual tip narrowly rounded, rounded to cuneate at the base, very thin, rather sparsely pilose with appressed ± rough hairs on both surfaces, with ± obscure barbellate domatia, ciliate; petiole 3–10 mm long, bristly pubescent; stipules connate at the base, 4 mm long including the 1.5–2 mm long filiform apex, triangular, deciduous.
Fruit yellowish-green (apparently ripe), or black, 12–13 × 11–12 mm, compressed-obcordate in lateral view, broadly emarginate at the apex, glabrous or with a few bristly hairs at the apex, crowned by the calyx lobes; pedicels up to 15–30 mm long.
Corolla clavate, shortly tailed in bud; greenish to yellowish-cream; tube 3–6 mm long, glabrous to pilose outside, and pubescent with tangled hairs in most of inside; lobes 1.5–3.5 mm long, ovate-oblong.
Inflorescences 2–3-flowered axillary cymes, or flowers solitary; peduncles 4 mm long and pedicels 3–10 mm long, both ± densely pubescent.
Calyx tube hemispherical, 1.2–1.5 mm long, ± glabrous or pilose; lobes 1–3.5 mm long, linear-lanceolate, glabrous.
Pollen presenter 5–8 mm long, coroniform, 2-lobed.
Style 4.5–5 mm long, thickened towards the base.
Ovary 2-locular.
Pyrenes 2.
