An erect virgate shrub or subshrub 0.5–2.5 m tall, often much-branched, glabrous, monoecious or sometimes dioecious.Lead shoots angular.Lateral shoots (2)5–10 cm long, often borne close together at the top of the lead shoots.Scale leaves c. 2 mm long, subulate, dark purplish-brown; stipules 3 × 1 mm, triangular-lanceolate, acutely acuminate, strongly auriculate adaxially, scarious, dark brown.Foliage leaves closely distichous; petioles c. 0.5 mm long; stipules c. 1 mm long, narrowly triangular-lanceolate, brownish.Leaf blades 3–13 × 2–7.5 mm, elliptic-obovate to elliptic-oblong, obtuse or rounded, sometimes apiculate, rounded-cuneate at the base, thickened and slightly recurved at the margins, chartaceous, dark green above, paler beneath, often reddish on the margins; lateral nerves in 3–6 pairs, scarcely visible above, often indistinct beneath.Male flowers in few-flowered bracteate cymules in the middle axils of the leafy shoots, female flowers solitary in the uppermost axils, either on the same or different shoots or plants.Male flowers: pedicels up to 3 mm long, slender; sepals 5(6), 2 × 1.5 mm, obovate-suborbicular, cream-coloured or greenish with white margins; disk glands 5(6), free, c. 0.5 mm in diameter, ± circular, shallowly tuberculate, the tubercles with apical pits; stamens 2(3), filaments united for the most part into a column c. 1 mm high, anthers 0.4 × 0.5 mm, transversely ovoid, free, ± horizontally held, laterally dehiscent, yellow.Female flowers: pedicels 2–5 mm long, more robust than in the male flower and broadening towards the apex; sepals 5, 1.75 × 1.25 mm, accrescent to up to 3.5 × 2.5 mm, obovate-suborbicular, cream-coloured to yellowish, often flushed reddish; disk 0.8 mm in diameter, roundly pentagonal, slightly undulate at the margin; ovary 0.75 mm in diameter, sessile, 6-lobed, subglobose, smooth; styles 3, 0.6 mm long, ± free, suberect at first, later divergent, bifid, the stigmas slightly recurved.Fruit 2–3 × 3–4 mm, depressed-globose, ± smooth, ochreous, enclosed by the persistent sepals.Seeds 1.5–2 × 1.2–1.6 × 1–1.4 mm, segmentiform, pale brown, with 15–20 fine longitudinal lines on the dorsal facet, and c. 12 concentric arcs on each ventral facet, with innumerable transverse striae between them.