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Shrub or small tree up to about 8 m. tall (in the Cape Province of S. Africa it can attain heights of 23 m.), glabrous except for the inflorescence; branches unarmed or with straight spines up to 9 cm. long; bark dark grey and rather thin.
Flowers in axillary racemes 1–3 cm. long; pedicels 2–5 mm. long with basal, caducous, triangular bracts c. 0.75 mm. long, rhachis and pedicels glabrous or puberulous.
Stamens c. 40 with slender filaments c. 3.5 mm. long; anthers oblong, somewhat arcuate, connective produced as a broadly triangular apiculus.
Sepals 5–6, c. 1.5 x 1 mm., ovate, acute at the apex, glabrous or puberulous outside and minutely ciliate at the margins.
Ovary subglobose, glabrous; style c. 2.5 mm. long, somewhat sulcate, rather stout, glabrous; stigma bifid, subsessile.
Fruit a globose, 2–3-seeded, fleshy berry, c. 0.8 cm. in diam., crowned with the persistent style.
Disk annular with many small fleshy lobes at the margin, surface densely villous.
Receptacle puberulous outside or glabrous, broadly funnel-shaped.
Petals 5–6, similar to the sepals but somewhat smaller.
