Medium-sized to large shrubs to 1.5 m. or so, spreading by stout haustoria-bearing surface runners; hairs stellate and dendritic; twigs terete. Leaves alternate to opposite, sometimes fascicled, petiolate, penninerved. Flowers 2–6 in sessile to shortly stalked umbels in the axils and crowded at older nodes; bract unilateral, lanceolate to ovate. Calyx annular. Corolla (4–)5-merous, green turning reddish, tomentose, bilaterally symmetrical, developing only a short V-slit; buds straight, with ellipsoid to obovoid head, induplicate; lobes short, erect, somewhat incurved at the tip, spathulate. Stamens attached at the base of corolla-lobes, short, essentially erect, but curving inward to form a central, collective anther-mass; anthers 4-thecous, with minute connective appendage. Style terete, tapered, pubescent on lower half; stigma obovoid to globular. Berry red, ellipsoid to cylindrical, hairy.