Plants large. Branchlets grayish brown when dry, striate. Winter bud scales persistent when leaves young. Petiole terete, slender, 2--9 cm, striate; leaf blade palmately 5--7-foliolate; petiolules 1--3 cm; leaflets obovate to sometimes oblong, 4--8(--10) × 2--3.5 cm, leathery, abaxially glaucous when dry, adaxially yellowish green, base cuneate to broadly cuneate, apex acute to rounded and uncinate; primary veins 3; tertiary veinlets sparse, abaxially conspicuously prominent, adaxially inconspicuous to slightly prominent. Racemes 8--15 cm, 8--15-flowered; bracts elliptic, deciduous. Pedicel 2--3 cm, filiform. Sepals yellowish green to creamy white, 1.4--1.8 cm, 1.6--2.2 cm in female flower, fleshy; outer 3 sepals ovate-lanceolate, ca. 7 mm wide; inner 3 sepals linear-lanceolate, 3--4 mm wide. Petals absent. Male flowers: filaments ca. 5 mm, connate into a tube, ± free apically; anthers linear, free, 3--3.5 mm; connective apical appendage hornlike, subulate, as long as anther. Pistillodes 3, subulate. Female flowers: staminodes 6, ca. 0.5 mm. Carpels ovoid-terete. Fruit yellow at maturity, brownish black when dry, oblong, 4--7 × 2--3 cm, densely and minutely tuberculate. Fl. Apr, fr. Aug--Oct.

* Shaded areas in mixed forests, among shrubs along valleys, by streams; 700--1500 m. Gansu, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan.