This a highly branched, spreading shrub which may sucker from the base. It can be used to make thickets and dense hedges to 4 meters tall. Leaves are oblong and grayish-green and the bark is smooth and light gray to brown. Flowers appear in March to May in dense sessile clusters. In some years, the flowers appear before the leaves and briefly give an effect similar to the flowering of Cornus mas.
Plants are dioecious.
Bluish-black fruits ripen between June and September and are attractive to birds. The plants are drought tolerant. PI 596380, formerly Ames 19065, was grown from seeds harvested from a seed orchard maintained by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Plant Materials Center, Los Lunas, New Mexico and donated in 1992. Original seed source was collected in the vicinity of Jemez Springs, Sandoval Co., New Mexico in 1939. Probable hardiness USDA Zone 5a.