Tree or shrub up to 11,5 m high, dioecious, armed with spines up to 8 cm long; bark ashen-white with longitudinal ridges and fissures, strongly lenticellate. Leaves alternate; blade soft to coriaceous, obovate to rhomboid-elliptic, seldom orbicular, 2,2-9,5 cm long, 1,5-5,5 cm broad, glabrous, sometimes puberulous on veins, venation very prominent on both sides, 3-5-veined from the base, apex acute to emarginate, base cuneate to obtuse, margin entire to sub-undulate; petiole 2-6 mm long, glabrous. Male flowers light green, in fascicles of 2-10; calyx 4-6-lobed; lobes 1,5-2,5 mm long, obovate-rhomboid, pubescent; stamens 9-20; filaments 3 mm long; nectaries hairy. Female flowers yellow-green, solitary or in fascicles of 2 or 3; pedicel 3-5 mm long; calyx 4-6-lobed; lobes 3-5 mm long, elliptic-lanceolate to obovate, pubescent, sometimes fringed with gland-tipped segments, acute, erect or somewhat recurved; disc hairy; ovary 2-lobed, unilocular, placentas 2, each with 1 ovule; styles 2. Fruit oblong, 1,5 cm in diam., glabrous, orange or red with white spots when ripe. Seeds 2, woolly, 0,9 cm long. Fig. 28: 3; 29: 2.
