Shrubs, climbing, ca. 3 m tall. Spines ca. 7 mm; older branches grayish black, scabrous; young branches flexuous, slightly flattened, with dense grayish brown or gray scales. Petiole brown, robust, 1-1.8 cm; leaf blade abaxially drying whitish, adaxially drying green or greenish, slightly glossy, ovate or elliptic, 7-14 × 3.8-6 cm, leathery or thinly leathery, abaxially with dense pale scales mixed with a few brown scales, lateral veins 8-12 per side of midrib, raised adaxially, base rounded or narrowly rounded, margin entire, apex obtuse. Flowers 1-3 on raceme to 7 mm. Pedicel ca. 2 mm. Flowers yellowish, outside densely silvery scaly. Calyx tube campanulate, 4-angled, 4-5 mm, abruptly constricted at base, inside glabrous; lobes broadly ovate, ca. as long as or shorter than tube, inside with sparse pale stellate hairs, apex bluntly acute. Filaments ca. 2 × as long as anthers; anthers oblong-ellipsoid, ca. 1.2 mm. Style erect, up to as long as anthers, glabrous or sparsely stellate-pilose; stigma inflated-compressed, ca. as long as anthers. Fruit not seen.

Elaeagnus obtusa is known to us only from the protologue.

● Hunan (Yizhang).