Dioecious or polygamous many-stemmed shrub, 0,5-3 m tall, occasionally a small tree with single trunk up to 3 m tall; bark greyish green or yellowish green, flaking in small yel­lowish papery pieces; young branchlets gla­brous, spine-tipped. Leaves usually simple but on long shoots often trifoliolate with smaller lateral leaflets, with long glandular hairs at base but otherwise glabrous, green, subsessile, mar­gin finely crenate-serrate, occasionally almost entire, apex acute or obtuse, base cuneate, lam­ina of simple leaves/terminal leaflet elliptic, narrowly obovate or obovate, (16-)25(-55)x (8—)16(—32) mm, lateral leaflets narrowly elliptic or elliptic, (4-)8(-12)x(2-)3(-10) mm. Inflorescence: reduced cymes of flowers borne in clusters. Flowers unisexual or bisex­ual, hypogynous. Pedicel 0,5-1 mm long, pe- dicel and calyx without glandular hairs (gla­brous). Disc 4-lobed, folded to form 4 large lobes towards the outside, inside of lobes deeply grooved, not adnate to perianth. Sta­mens 8. Fruit ellipsoid to subglobose, ± 11x8x7 mm, glabrous; putamen rugose, with a hump on less convex race; pseudo-aril red, with 4 arms of equal length reaching almost to apex of putamen.