A succulent bush 8–12 ft. high, or a tree 15–20 ft. high, with a trunk 6–8 in. in diam. (Welwitsch). Branches forked or alternately branching or the branchlets more or less clustered, distinctly jointed to the stems and branches, terete, 2–12 in. long, 1 1/4–3 lin. thick in the specimens seen, naked, spineless, marked with very small alternate leaf-scars, glabrous. Leaves, according to Welwitsch, linear, not seen, only present on young growing branchlets, deciduous. Cymes crowded in terminal head-like clusters 1/3– 1/2 in. in diam., sessile or subsessile, each with 2–3 involucres. Bracts scale-like, 1/2– 3/4 lin. long, broadly ovate or rounded. Involucre 2 lin. in diam. and 1 1/2 lin. deep, cup-shaped, minutely woolly-puberulous on the upper part, with 5 glands and 5 erect subquadrate toothed or subentire puberulous lobes, yellowish; glands 2/3– 3/4 lin. in their greater diam., peltate, transversely elliptic, apparently somewhat 2-lipped, entire. Ovary with a calyx at its base, divided into three ovate acute or obtuse entire lobes 1/2– 2/3 lin. long, pubescent, exserted on a pubescent pedicel about 4 lin. long; styles 1 lin. long, united to the middle or slightly beyond, puberulous, with spreading arms, channelled above and 2-lobed at thea pex. Capsule 5 lin. in diam., subglobose, obscurely trigonous, pubescent, with woody cell-walls 1/3 in. thick. Seeds not seen, destroyed by a gall-fly in the specimens seen.
