Shrubs deciduous, 3-6 m tall. Branchlets brown, glabrous, with dense, conspicuous lenticels and longitudinal slits; old branches gray. Stipules broadly triangular, abaxially connate, surrounding buds; petiole 4-5 mm, glabrous or pilose; leaf blade adaxially gray-white, elliptic, 7-10 × 3-5 cm, papery, abaxially densely pubescent or with barbate vein axils, adaxially glabrous, lateral veins 8-10 pairs, base rounded, asymmetrical, apex obtuse, mucronulate. Inflorescences ca. 3.5 cm, glabrous. Flowers greenish, glabrous, in terminal cymose racemes or few in axillary cymes; flower buds globose, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., shorter than pedicels. Calyx tube cup-shaped; lobes triangular, adaxially slightly keeled and with minute basal beak. Petals broadly obovate, very short, ca. 1 mm, apex emarginate, hooded. Disk thin, lining calyx tube, marginally slightly thickened and prominent. Ovary globose, basally surrounded but not immersed into disk; style cylindric, short, undivided; stigma capitate, distinctly 2- or 3-lobed. Fruit red when young, nearly black at maturity, cylindric to slightly obovoid. Fl. Jul, fr. Aug-Sept.

● Forests, valley forests; 500-1500 m. Anhui, W Hubei, Zhejiang.