A much-branched often dense scrambling or spreading weak-stemmed bush 2–5(10) m high; plants monoecious or dioecious, armed, glabrous; branches long slender horizontal, arching or pendent, blackish.Bark rough, dark brown.Twigs dark grey.Lateral shoots leafy, floriferous or both, not usually more than 10 cm long.Short shoots giving rise to one or more secondary laterals or lead shoots.Scale leaves 1.5–2 mm long, triangular-lanceolate, ciliate, dark brown, their bases becoming hard and spiny; their stipules triangular-ovate, otherwise resembling them.Foliage leaves distichous.Petioles 1 mm long.Stipules 1.3 mm long, oblong-linear to linear-lanceolate, chestnut-brown, ciliate-fimbriate.Leaf blades 0.7–2.3 × 0.4–1.5 cm, obovate-oblong to elliptic-oblong, usually ± parallel sided, obtuse, rounded or truncate, occasionally mucronulate, cuneate or rounded at the base, firmly membranaceous, bright yellow-green above, glaucous beneath; lateral nerves in 6–7(9) pairs, not or scarcely prominent above or beneath, often forming somewhat irregular loops.Flowers in clusters which are all male, or else a few male plus 1 female, or female flowers solitary.Male flowers: pedicels 2–3 mm, capillary; sepals (4)5, the 2 outer 1 × 1 mm, the 3 inner 1.3 × 1.3 mm, obovate-suborbicular, yellowish-green, cream-coloured or occasionally pinkish-, crimson- or purplish-tinged; disk glands (4)5, free, circular, ± smooth, fleshy; stamens (2)4(5), the 2 outer free, the rest united, or all united into a column 1 mm high, anthers 0.3 mm long, vertically held, longitudinally dehiscent.Female flowers: pedicels 1.5–2.5 mm long, slender; sepals ± as in the male; disk 0.67 mm in diameter, annular, crenellate, thick, fleshy; ovary 0.5 mm in diameter, sessile, rhomboid-ovoid, ± smooth; styles 3(4), 1 mm long, connate at the base, ± erect, slender, usually simple, slightly thickened and somewhat recurved at the apex.Fruit 3–4 × 4–5 mm, subglobose, smooth, fleshy, brownish at first later becoming dark reddish-purple, and black when dried.Seeds 1.5 × 1 × 1 mm, triquetrous, ± smooth, shiny, bright reddish-brown, with a round aperture by the hilum.
