Shrubs scandent, to 3 m tall. Branchlets brownish to reddish brown, cylindric, with soft hairs, brownish bristles, and sparse, needle-like prickles. Leaves simple; petiole 7–11 cm, brownish, with soft hairs, brownish soft bristles, and slightly needle-like prickles; stipules 1.5–2 cm, palmately 5-veined, pectinately or palmately lobed; lobes pinnately divided again into linear or linear-lanceolate lobules, soft hairy, bristly; blade suborbicular, 0.9–1.5 cm in diam., abaxially brownish tomentose, with intermixed reddish brown long hairs and sparse, needle-like prickles along veins, adaxially villous only along veins, base cordate, margin 5-lobed; lobes triangular-lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate to narrowly elliptic-lanceolate, apex acute, terminal lobe longest, lobes near base shorter, triangular, irregularly sharply serrate. Inflorescences terminal, narrow panicles or subracemes, 6–8(–10) cm, few flowered, or flowers in clusters in leaf axils; rachis and pedicels with dense soft hairs, brownish bristles, and sparse, needle-like prickles; bracts to 1.5 cm, palmatipartite; lobes linear or linear-lanceolate, soft hairy, bristly. Pedicel 0.7–1(–2.5) cm. Flowers ca. 1 cm in diam. or more. Calyx abaxially brownish tomentose and bristly; tube shallowly cupular; sepals erect in fruit, broadly ovate or ovate-lanceolate, 0.8–1.2 cm × 5–7 mm, apex caudate, outer sepals apically shallowly laciniate, inner sepals entire. Petals white, broadly elliptic or suborbicular, 5–7 mm in diam., glabrous, base shortly clawed, apex somewhat undulate or erose. Stamens many, longer than or nearly as long as petals; filaments linear or with slightly broadened bases. Pistils 30–40, longer than stamens; style and ovary glabrous. Aggregate fruit orange-red, with few drupelets, glabrous, enclosed in calyx; pyrenes distinctly rugulose. Fl. Jun–Aug, fr. Sep–Oct. 2n = 28*.

Forests, thickets on slopes, valleys, ravines, near water courses; 900--2500 m. Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Zhejiang [Thailand, Vietnam].