It is a small tree usually thirty to eighty feet (ten to twenty-four meters) in height, with a short, slender trunk and spreading, often pendulous branches, which form sometimes a broad and sometimes a narrow round-topped head. The roots are thick, fleshy and stoloniferous. It is also given to shrubby growth. The tree has oval entire leaves, and unisexual flowers on short stalks. In the male flowers, which are numerous, the stamens are sixteen in number and arranged in pairs; the female flowers are solitary, with traces of stamens, and a smooth ovary with one ovule in each of the eight cells—the ovary is surmounted by four styles, which are hairy at the base. The fruit-stalk is very short, bearing a subglobose fruit an inch or rather more in diameter, of an orange-yellow color, ranging to bluish, and with a sweetish astringent pulp. It is surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx-lobes, which increase in size as the fruit ripens.