Shrub or tree 0.3– 8 m high, evergreen; bole gnarled, bark dark brown and peeling off in strips; much branched from near base with ascending branches; branches with poorly developed infrafoliar ridges, densely puberulous to short-pubescent with short simple hairs and usually also with longer glandular hairs to 0.5 mm. Leaves in whorls of 4, appressed to spreading, pale green, straight or slightly incurved, fleshy, flat above, convex and sulcate beneath, narrowly elliptic, 0.8– 4.5 mm long, 0.4– 0.9 mm wide, margins minutely ‘ denticulate’ with a few glands, apex acute or obtuse, sparsely (glandular-)puberulous on both surfaces or glabrous; petiole 0.3– 0.7 mm long, puberulous. Inflorescence with nodding flowers in clusters of 4– 12 at the tips of branchlets; pedicel reddish, 1– 2.2 mm long, puberulous with minute simple or glandular hairs. Calyx (apparent calyx; some lobes are really recaulescent bracteoles) 4(– 5)-partite, green, bowl-shaped, 3 lobes subequal, broadly triangular, 0.8– 1.2 mm long, apex acute and slightly thickened, the 4th lobe slightly longer, apex green and slightly leaf-like, all lobes glabrous or puberulous with simple or glandular hairs. Corolla 4(– 5)-partite, dark pink to red, fading to brown, rarely whitish, bowl-shaped, 1.1– 1.8 mm long, 1.5– 2.5 mm in diameter, pubescent outside, the lobes ovate, 0.4– 0.8 mm long, apex broadly rounded. At anthesis the red fused stamens surrounding the red capitate stigma may form a connate body to 2 mm in diameter; stamens 8, rarely 5– 9 in some flowers, slighly exserted, anthers remaining fused after dehiscence, filaments 0.5– 0.7 mm long, anthers 0.6– 0.9 mm long. Ovary 4-locular, puberulous, to 0.8 mm long, to 1.5 mm in diameter in fruit; style 0.1– 0.3 mm long, stigma peltate, 0.6– 1.5 mm in diameter, with centrally 4– 5 crossing raised lines above. Fruit splitting in 4 at maturity showing the central keel on the 4 concave valves, with a ridged central axis topped by the capitate stigma. Fig. 3.
