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Erect dense twiggy evergreen shrubs, 0-75-5m high or trees up to 7 m high with a densely branched canopy, stems or trunks 2-15 cm in diam., bark grey, scaly; branchlets much divided, densely covered with leaves, glabrous except for rust-coloured glands which often cover the young parts giving the surface a rust-brown granular appearance. Leaves subopposite, alternate or in pseudo-whorls at ends of the branches, coriaceous (in texture often resembling old leather), shortly petioled, pale to dark green, paler and often rust-brown below when young, quite glabrous but sparsely to densely covered with rust-coloured glands which give the surface a granular appearance, obovate, oblanceolate, narrowly-elliptic or narrowly oblanceolate; base cuneate; apex obtuse, subobtuse or abruptly narrowed to a rounded tip; nervation indistinct on both surfaces or raised on upper surface, usually not raised on lower surface; margin entire, not revolute, very strongly undulate to practically flat; petioles 1-3 mm long. Inflorescence 5-20 mm long, axillary, glabrous except for rust-coloured, often stalked glands, 5-7-flowered; bracts lanceolate, boat-shaped, glandular. Flowers dioecious, white, greenish-white or cream, fragrant, mostly tetramerous. Male flowers somewhat larger than the females, 3-3 • 5 mm long. Calyx shallowly saucer-shaped, shallowly 4-(5-6-)lobed, glandular on the outside, \ or less of the length of the corolla. Corolla cup-shaped to widely bell-shaped, glabrous or with a few hairs on the lobes; tube cleft halfway or more; lobes 4(5-6), ovate. Stamens 12-20, in 2 rows, often in pairs together; filaments glabrous; anthers lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, hairy at the apex. Ovary rudimentary, situated on a fringed disc, occasionally with 2 glabrous styles and then densely covered with whitish glands. Female flowers smaller than the males, 2-2 • 5 mm long. Calyx saucer-shaped 4-(5-6-)lobed on the rim, glandular outside. Corolla usually campanulate, tube cleft halfway down or more, lobes 4(5-6) usually contorted, as long as or longer than the tube, usually glabrous, occasionally with a few appressed bristles. Staminodes present or absent, star-shaped, hairy upwards. Ovary depressed ovoid, situated on a fringed disc, usually densely covered with white or grey scale-like glands, usually 2-celled due to incomplete septation of two cells with septa present only in the form of a ridge (4-6-celled ovaries also found with the cells complete and a single pendulous ovule in each); styles usually 2, stout, joined at the base, glabrous; stigma obliquely crescent-shaped. Fruit a globose, fleshy berry, 4-6 mm in diam., one-seeded, red, turning purple or black when ripe. Seeds globose, 3-4 mm in diam., divided into three parts by two thin curved lines and a groove; endosperm flinty, pale grey.