A robust shrub, deciduous, 8 ft or more high; stems erect or arching towards the top, stout, armed with stiff, short, broad-based spines, densely clothed with bristles, and with stalked glands. Leaves of the first-year (or barren) shoots mostly pinnate, 8 to 12 in. long, with five leaflets, those of the flowering shoots shorter, with three leaflets or sometimes simple. Leaflets obliquely obovate or ovate, 2 to 5 in. long, 11⁄4 to 31⁄2 in. wide, tapered, rounded, or heart-shaped at the base, slender-pointed, sharply and doubly toothed, dull and hairy on both sides; main-stalk bristly and furnished with stalked glands like the shoots. Flowers produced in July in terminal, cylindrical panicles 4 to 5 in. long, the petals pink, toothed, the flower-stalks and calyx densely clothed with bristles and stalked glands. Fruits black, about 1⁄2 in. wide, edible.
Native of Central China; introduced by Wilson in 1907. The most remarkable feature of this bramble are the conspicuous dark glands, resembling minute black-headed pins, stuck among the bristles on the stems and leaf-stalks, but extraordinarily abundant on the sepals and flower-stalks. The leaf next to the panicle is often simple.