A much-branched shrub, or small tree up to 5 m tall, monoecious or dioecious.Bark smooth, brownish-grey, later becoming roughened.Wood hard.Young twigs densely silvery-lepidote and rusty-flecked.Stipules minute, obscured by the scales.Petioles 0.1–2(4) cm long.Leaves aromatic when crushed, whorled or subopposite; blades 1–8 × 0.5–4 cm, suborbicular-elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, obtusely acuminate to emarginate at the apex, entire, cuneate to rounded at the base, with a pair of minute sessile discoid basal glands on the under surface often obscured by scales, firmly chartaceous, glabrous or minutely stellate-pubescent and bright or dark green on upper surface, densely silvery-lepidote and rusty-flecked beneath; midrib often impressed above, prominent beneath, lateral nerves in 4–10 pairs, not or scarcely prominent above, invisible beneath.Racemes 0.5–2 cm long, abbreviated and often apparently umbellate, terminal, androgynous, all male or all female; bracts minute, scale-like.Male flowers: pedicels 1–2 mm long in bud, 3–4 mm long in flower; sepals 5, 2.5 × 1.5 mm, triangular-ovate, densely silvery- or rusty-lepidote without, sparingly pubescent to subglabrous within; petals 5, 2 × 0.5 mm, elliptic-oblong to linear, glabrous without, pubescent within, ciliate, pale yellowish-cream or whitish; disk glands 5, truncate, thin, glabrous; stamens 16, filaments 3–4 mm long, glabrous above, pubescent below, white, anthers 1 mm long with a broad connective, yellow; receptacle pubescent.Female flowers: pedicels 2–2.5 mm long, stouter than in the male, densely lepidote; sepals 5, 3 × 2 mm, ovate, otherwise as in the male; petals as in the male; disk 5-lobed, the lobes truncate, glabrous; ovary 2.5 mm in diameter, globose, densely brown-lepidote; styles 3, 2 mm long, spreading, bicrurate (very deeply bipartite, almost bisected), the segments erect, linear-filiform, glabrous.Fruits 6–8 × 6–8 mm, shallowly rounded-trilobate, septicidal, densely silvery-green lepidote, brown-flecked.Seeds 4.5–5 × 2.5–3 × 1.5–2 mm, narrowly compressed-ellipsoid, smooth, shiny, dark brown or blackish; caruncle 1 mm wide, convex, creamy-white.