A straggling or rambling shrub, often purplish or brownish in colour. Leaves lanceolate or elliptic, 4-10 (-12) cm long, (1.5-) 2-3.5 cm broad, crenate-serrate to entire or subentire, acuminate, petiolate, pubescent. Cymes short, axillary, 1.5-2 (-2.5) cm long. Flowers small, 5-6 mm across, white or purplish; bracts 2-3 mm long, somewhat subulate, pubescent. Calyx 2.5-3.5 mm long, with spreading lobes in fruit, divided half-way down but scarcely enlarged in fruit. Corolla-tube 3-3.5 (-4) mm long; lobes 3.5-5 mm long, lower larger. Stamens exserted. Capsules 2.5-4 mm long, subglobose, glabrous, slightly 4-lobed, red when ripe.