Shrub 1–2.5 m tall or tree 7–9 m tall with smooth brown bark or sometimes rough and finely fissured; young branchlets angular or ridged, densely lenticellate; flowering branchlets often leafless. Leaves very glossy and bronze-flushed when young, thin, oblong-elliptic, 2.5–12(–14) cm long, 1.2–4.3(–5) cm wide, acute, slightly acuminate or narrowed to a ± rounded apex, cuneate to ± rounded at the base, spinulose-serrate or ± setose at the margin, the spinules subulate, facing apex; lateral veins 13–15, prominent, but the actual area of lamina around the veins very often conspicuously impressed; tertiary venation reticulate, very prominent above, less so beneath; petiole 1–3 mm long; stipules narrowly triangular, 6 mm long, 3 mm wide, serrate near tip. Flowers 1–6 in short raceme-like or subumbellate inflorescences, the rhachis 0–7 mm long or flowers solitary; pedicels 2–3.3 mm long, jointed (1–)5–7 mm from the base. Sepals ovate-oblong, 1.2–2.2 cm long, 6–8 mm wide, becoming red but scarcely enlarging in fruit up to 2.4 cm long, 1 cm wide. Petals yellow, round or elliptic, (8–)18–25 mm long, (9–)13–18 mm wide, narrowed at the base. Anthers 4–6.5 mm long, slightly longer than the filaments, opening by apical pores. Carpels 5–7; styles very shortly branched at apex. Drupelets black, ellipsoid or subcylindrical, 10–12 mm long, 7–8 mm wide (rarely 8x4.5 mm). Fig. 2 (p. 15).