A shrub 2-3 m high; branchlets spreading; young shoots, peduncles and fruit hispid with simple hairs mixed with jointed glandular hairs, subferruginous. Leaves alternate, shortly but distinctly petioled; petioles 1-2 mm long; leaf-blade ovate to broadly elliptic, 1-2-5 cm long and 0-6-1 -3 cm broad, thinly coriaceous or firmly membranous, sparsely pilose with jointed glandular hairs; apex subacute, base rounded or obtuse. Flowers dioecious, female and functionally male, tetramerous or pentamerous, solitary, pale yellow; peduncle about 1 cm long. Calyx deeply lobed, pilose outside, pubescent within, strongly accrescent in fruit, lobes lanceolate, acute, about 3 mm long. Corolla urceolate; deeply lobed, glabrous except for the minutely ciliate margin, lobes rounded and recurved. Stamens usually 8 (or 10) inserted in a single row at the base of the corolla, anthers hairy, filaments short or stamens reduced to staminodes. Ovary hairy, 8- (10-) celled; style hairy, branches glabrous at the apex, 4 (5) in number. Fruit very broadly oblong-ovate, about 1 • 3 cm long, sparsely glandular-pubescent with four longitudinal lines where the carpels join; calyx accrescent, loosely enclosing the fruits or reflexed, deeply lobed; lobes about 2 cm long, ovate-oblong, rather thin but stiff in texture, reddish-brown, many-nerved. Seeds about 1 cm long, 3-8, brown, oblong in outline, circumvented by a thin line, endosperm flinty, not ruminate.