Shrubs or small trees, 2-3 m tall, glabrous. Branches and branchlets 4-angled becoming terete with age, often terminating as indurate spines. Petiole 2-10 mm; leaf blade adaxially shiny, lanceolate, elliptic-oblanceolate, or oblong, 2-9 × 1-2 cm, base attenuate, apex obtuse, or mucronate.

Floral tube red-orange or pale yellow, campanulate-urceolate, 2-3 × 1-1.5 cm; sepals 5-9, erect, deltate. Petals 5-9, bright red-orange [or white], obovate, 1.5-3 × 1-2 cm, apex rounded or obtuse. Stamens numerous included to exserted. Ovary 8-13-loculed, in 2 or 3 superposed layers, lower locules with axile placentation, upper ones with apparent parietal placentation.

Fruit globose, leathery berries, variable in color, red to yellow-green or red-brown, 5-12 cm in diam., crowned by persistent sepals, irregularly dehiscent. Seeds bipyramidal within juicy sarcotestal layer, ruby-red, pink, or yellowish-white. Fl. Mar-Jul. 2n = 16, 18.