Branches erect, but with drooping twigs and swollen, purplish nodes.
Flowers crowded in regular transverse ranks. Fruit a 1-seeded berry, blackish when ripe. Seeds brown to black, 0.7 -1.25 mm long, compressed, with a reticulate surface. Disturbed rainforest and margins at low elevation. In Fiji, an aggressive weed from sea level to 400 m, most often along roadsides and in thickets, but also sometimes in secondary forest or on forested ridges, rarely in intact rain forest.