The fruits are edible and extremely rich in vitamin C. Fodder plant. melliferous plant. Ornamental plant. Honey nectar plants.

Trees or shrubs, evergreen, to 15 m tall. Young branches densely yellow-gray tomentose; branchlets pilose; old branches purple-red. Stipular spines 2, one oblique and hooklike recurved; petiole 5-13 mm, densely gray-yellow tomentose; leaf blade adaxially dark green, shiny, ovate or oblong-elliptic, rarely subrounded, 2.5-6 × 1.5-4.5 cm, papery to thickly papery, abaxially yellow or gray-white tomentose, adaxially glabrous, 3-veined from base, veins conspicuously reticulate abaxially, impressed or ± prominent adaxially, base subrounded, slightly oblique, margin serrulate, apex rounded, rarely acute. Flowers green-yellow, few to 10 in subsessile or shortly pedunculate, axillary dichotomous cymes. Pedicel 2-4 mm, gray-yellow tomentose. Sepals ovate-triangular, abaxially hairy, apex acute. Petals oblong-spatulate, clawed at base. Stamens subequaling petals. Disk thick, fleshy, 10-lobed, concave at middle. Ovary globose, glabrous; style 2-fid or branched to half. Drupe orange or red, turning black at maturity, oblong or globose, 1-1.2 cm, ca. l cm in diam., with persistent tube at base; fruiting pedicel 5-8 mm, pilose, 2-loculed, 1- or 2-seeded; mesocarp corky; endocarp thick, thickly leathery. Seeds red-brown, broad and compressed, 6-7 × 5-6 mm, shiny. Flowering from August- November, fr. Sep-Dec.

Cultivated places and farms.