Shrub 1–4 m. tall, with slender glabrous twigs bearing paired supra-axillary straight ascending spines up to ± 2 cm. long; bark of young shoots dull purplish; apparently sometimes flowering when leafless.. Leaf-blades ovate, 2.7–7 cm. long, 1.3–4.5 cm. wide, acuminate at the apex, the actual tip narrowly rounded, rounded at the base, drying blackish, glabrous save for some bristly hairs on the midrib beneath and sparsely hairy domatia; petiole ± 3 mm. long; stipule-bases broadly triangular, 1.5 mm. long, densely setose within, the subulate appendage 2 mm. long.. Flowers solitary in the leaf-axils or abnormally a triad of flowers terminating a shoot; pedicels 0.8–1.2(–6 in fruit) mm. long.. Calyx-tube obconic, ± 2 mm. long; limb-tube ± 0.3 mm. long, with narrow acute triangular teeth ± 1 mm. long.. Buds acuminate, glabrous.. Corolla greenish white; tube 4.5 mm. long, with upper half inside with deflexed hairs; lobes narrowly triangular, 5 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, narrowly acuminate, the subulate appendage ± 1 mm. long.. Ovary 2-locular; style exserted ± 1.5 mm.; stigmatic club broadly cup-shaped ± 1.5 mm. wide.. Fruit 1.4 cm. in diameter; pyrenes brown, almost straight, compressed, narrowly obovoid, obscurely keeled at the apex, almost smooth.