A herb that grows up to 60 cm. The plant is bitter in taste, the leaves are small, green, and short-petioled with a thin and glaucous under surface. The flowers are unisexual, monoecious, minute, greenish, and inconspicuous, short-stalked and borne in pairs in the axils of the leaves. The fruit is a capsule, globose, slightly depressed at the top with six enervations. In the roots, the secondary growth starts very early and is well pronounced. There is a distinct cambium. No starch grains, mineral crystals or latex vessels are seen both in root and stem.

Bitter in taste, astringent, stomachic, diuretic, febrifuge and antiseptic (plant).

Used in gastric complaints including dyspepsia, colic, diarrhoea and dysentery; also employed in dropsy and diseases of urino-genital system, in diabetes (plant); in dysentery (young shoots); for jaundice (fresh roots); as a refrigerant for scalp (leaves decoction); for application on oedematous swellings and ulcers (leaves, roots); to offensive sores and ulcers (latex).