Dioecious, erect shrub to 3 m high; branchlets angular, ribbed, glabrescent. Leaves simple, sessile, erect, narrowly elliptic, rarely oblanceolate or linear, 4.5–10(–13.5) cm long, 5–13 mm wide, acute, rarely mucronate, entire or (sometimes minutely) dentate, margins revolute, surfaces glabrous, viscid, base extending as a rib or small wing down the stem. Flowers in axillary cymes, rarely solitary or 2 together; pedicels 3–8.5 mm long; sepals 4, lanceolate to ovate, 1.5–3.5 mm long, viscid, caducous; stamens 8, c. as long as sepals; ovary pubescent. Capsule 3–4-winged, depressed-obovate to transversely oblong in outline, 5.5–8 mm long, 17–25 mm wide, glabrous or sparsely puberulent, wings (4.5–)7–10 mm wide, membranous; seeds lenticular, 2.6–2.8 mm long, black, more or less shiny, exarillate. Flowers late winter to spring.
