Shrubs or small trees, 2–6 m tall. Branchlets brownish or grayish brown, terete, glabrous, with sparse, orbicular or elliptic lenticels; buds ovoid or conical, 0.8–1.4 cm × 4–8 mm, apex acute or acuminate; scales reddish brown. Leaves imparipinnate, together with rachis 7–12(–18) cm; petiole 2–5 cm; stipules broadly ovate or suborbicular, 1–1.2 cm, cleft to multifid or entire with large teeth, rarely narrower, subulate, sparsely reddish brown pubescent; rachis sulcate, narrowly winged, abaxially rust-brown pubescent, with glands at base of leaflet; leaflet blades 9–15-paired, at intervals of 1–2 cm, pale abaxially, dark green adaxially, linear or narrowly lanceolate, 2.5–5(–6) × 1–1.5 cm, abaxially rust-brown pubescent along midvein, adaxially lustrous, base rounded, margin sharply serrate from base or above middle, apex shortly acuminate. Compound corymbs terminal, 5–7(–10) cm in diam., many flowered; rachis and pedicels densely rust-brown pubescent; bracts reddish brown, broadly linear-triangular, 3–10 mm, puberulous. Pedicel 2–4 mm. Flowers ca. 8 mm in diam. Hypanthium widely obconical or somewhat shortly tubular. Sepals greenish or reddish, triangular, 1–1.5 mm, glabrous, glandular at margin. Petals white, rarely reddish at margin, orbicular, obovate, or rhombic, 2.5–3 × 1.5–2 mm, base shortly clawed. Stamens ca. 20. Ovary 5-loculed; styles 5, free, slightly pubescent. Fruit globose, 7–8 mm in diam., glabrous, with persistent erect sepals; seeds blackish, lanceolate-ellipsoid, 4–5 mm, slightly rugose. Fl. Jun–Jul, fr. Sep–Oct.

Coniferous forests, high mountain thickets; 2700--5400 m. NW Sichuan, S Xizang, NW Yunnan [Bhutan, India, NE Myanmar, Nepal, Sikkim].