Shrubs or small trees. Branchlets and leaf rachises with prickles. Branchlets pale purplish red and glaucous when dry. Leaves 5-13-foliolate; petiolules 3-6 mm; leaflet blades alternate, ovate, lanceolate, or rarely broadly ovate, 3-10 × 1.5-4.5 cm, oil glands inconspicuous, midvein adaxially impressed, base subrounded to broadly cuneate, margin crenulate or entire toward base, apex obliquely caudate with a retuse tip. Inflorescences terminal, cymose-corymbiform, to 30-flowered. Flowers 4-merous. Perianth in 2 series. Petals ca. 3 mm. Female flowers (3 or)4-carpelled. Fruit pedicel to 4.5 mm, 0.5-1 mm in diam.; follicles purplish red, ca. 5 mm in diam., oil glands impressed, apex beaked. Seeds ca. 4 mm in diam. Fl. May-Jun, fr. Sep-Nov.