Shrubs scandent, ca. 1.5 m tall. Branchlets reddish brown to purplish brown when young, grayish brown in age, terete, soft hairy, glabrescent, with sparse prickles. Leaves palmately 5-foliolate; petiole 2–4 cm; leaflets sessile or subsessile, soft hairy; stipules linear-lanceolate, 4–6 mm, puberulous, usually undivided; blade of leaflets elliptic-lanceolate or rhombic-lanceolate, 3–7 × 1–2.4 cm, terminal leaflet slightly longer than lateral leaflets, both surfaces soft hairy along veins, base cuneate, margin coarsely sharply serrate and doubly serrate, apex acuminate to caudate. Inflorescences terminal on lateral branchlets, 1-flowered; bracts linear-lanceolate, 3–5 mm, puberulous, margin entire. Pedicel 2–3.5 cm, glabrous. Flowers 1.5–2 cm in diam. Calyx abaxially glabrous, unarmed or with sparse, needle-like prickles; tube broadly pelviform; sepals erect, spreading, ovate-lanceolate or triangular-lanceolate, 8–10 mm, margin entire, rarely apically shallowly 2- or 3-laciniate, inner sepals tomentose at margin, apex caudate. Petals white, ovate or elliptic, much shorter than sepals, puberulous, base slightly clawed. Stamens many, uniseriate; filaments broad, complanate. Pistils 10–15; ovary and base of style yellowish villous. Aggregate fruit red, semiglobose, 1–1.5 cm in diam., together with persistent styles villous, enclosed in calyx; pyrenes to 4 mm, rugose. Fl. Apr–May, fr. May–Jun.

Slopes, stream side forests, mixed forests on low ridges; 1600--2500 m. SW Guizhou (Anlong Bouyeizu Miaozu Zizhixian), SW Yunnan (Shuangjiang Xian).