Lianas, climbing or twining; branches glabrous to puberulent or hispidulous, becoming weakly angled, often channeled, bluish black to reddish brown. Leaves opposite; petiole 4-6 mm, glabrous, puberulent, or sparsely hirsute; blade drying papery, leathery, or rigid-membranous, adaxially shiny and greenish, pale brown, or brownish black, abaxially matte, greenish, pale brown, or straw-colored, ovate, obovate-lanceolate, obovate-oblong, lanceolate, or linear-lanceolate, 6-9 × 2-3.5 cm, both surfaces glabrous or sometimes hirsute, hispidulous, or puberulent along principal veins, base acute or cuneate, apex acuminate or mucronulate; secondary veins 4 or 5 pairs, usually with pilosulous domatia; stipules fused into a tube, 2-6 mm, scarious to membranous, puberulent, broadly rounded to truncate, on each side with 2 bristles 0.5-1 mm, often caducous. Inflorescence terminal; peduncles 3-11, fasciculate, umbellate, or shortly racemiform, 4-11 mm, puberulent to glabrescent, subtended by 1 to several linear caducous bracts 1-2 mm; heads 1 per peduncle, subglobose to oblate, 1-10 mm in diam., 6-12-flowered. Flowers fused at base or for up to half of hypanthium, biology not noted. Calyx glabrous; limb 0.2-0.8 mm, truncate to denticulate. Corolla white, campanulate, outside glabrous to puberulent; tube 1.2-2 mm, inside densely villous from middle to throat; lobes 4 or 5, narrowly oblong to ligulate, 2.2-3 mm, apically thickened and hooked. Drupecetum subglobose or compressed globose, 7-12 mm in diam., glabrescent. Drupes mostly to fully fused, red, subglobose, 4-5 mm. Fl. Jun-Jul, fr. Oct-Nov.

This is the most commonly collected species of Morinda in China. This species is here circumscribed broadly and a bit differently from FRPS (71(2): 190-191. 1999); in particular, the species is restricted to glabrous plants there but pubescent plants are included here. There seems to be no other difference among these two sets of plants, and on specimens there is continuous variation in pubescence that cannot be clearly partitioned into separate states.

Forests on mountains, sparse or dense thickets at streamsides and roadsides; 300-1200 m. Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Taiwan, Zhejiang [India, Japan, Sri Lanka, S Thailand].