Shrub, small tree or woody scrambler 2–6 m tall, bark grey, smooth.Stems rarely(?) with stout paired spines, youngest shoots slightly to densely appressed pubescent, later glabrous and with grey or reddish-brown peeling bark, longitudinally wrinkled.Leaves 1.8–10 × 0.8–3.8 cm, elliptic, oblong or elliptic-lanceolate, narrowly rounded at the apex, cuneate to rounded at the base, thinly coriaceous, very markedly discolorous, glaucous beneath, glabrous or with sparse pubescence on nerves beneath; petiole 5–10 mm long; stipules forming a short sheath 1–3 mm long, with subulate appendages 1.5–3.5 mm long, densely hairy inside.Flowers in 5–many-flowered dichasially branched cymes with pubescent axes; peduncle 3–10 mm long; pedicels 2–8 mm long; bracts 1.5–2 mm long, ovate, acuminate; bracteoles c. 0.5 mm long.Calyx tube c. 1.5 mm long, cup-shaped, pubescent; lobes 5–9 × 1.2–1.5 mm, linear-spathulate.Corolla with 5 short tails in bud; green or ± yellow, pubescent; tube 3–3.5 mm long, ± cylindrical, puberulous outside, sparsely pilose at throat and with a ring of deflexed hairs within; lobes 6 × 1.5 mm, oblong-lanceolate, acuminate to shortly tailed at apex.Style exserted 4–5 mm; pollen presenter cylindrical-mitriform, scarcely 1 mm long, minutely 5-lobulate at apex.Ovary 5-locular.Fruit yellowish-brown, 1.5–4.5 cm in diameter, subglobose, with 3–5 pyrenes.