Shrubs, ?deciduous; spines absent. Older branches brownish gray, glabrous; young branches reddish brown. Petiole 2.5-3 mm, silvery; leaf blade ovate or suborbicular, 2-2.5 × 1.3-1.5 cm, thinly leathery, abaxially silvery with scattered reddish scales, adaxially drying green, with scattered silvery scales, margin undulate. Flowers solitary, erect, or 1-3 on very short shoots. Perianth silvery white; tube very short, obscurely 4-angled, ca. 2.5 mm; lobes triangular, ca. 2.5 mm, interior sparsely stellate pilose. Filaments almost absent. Style incurved at apex, hardly as long as anthers, sparsely pubescent. Fruit not seen.

Elaeagnus ovata is known only from the type gathering made in Shanghai in 1879. It is easily separated from other members of the genus by the small leaves with undulate margins and the erect flowers with an obscurely 4-angled perianth tube only ca. 2.5 mm. The flowers resemble most closely those of another E Chinese species, E. oldhamii, but that plant has evergreen leaves, whereas E. ovata is described as deciduous, though the leaves are described as thinly leathery which is usually much more typical of evergreen species. Elaeagnus ovata has been overlooked in accounts of the plants of Shanghai and of Jiangsu suggesting that it might no longer be extant.

● Shanghai.