Native to Hubei and Sichuan provinces in western China. Thickets, roadsides, bamboo forests, streamsides of forest understories; 700-2100 m.

Purchased in 1928 or 1929 from Hillier Nurseries, Romsey, Hampshire.

Introduced in 1907 by plant collector Ernest Henry Wilson.
Named after Charles Sprague Sargent, an American dendrologist and the first
director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

Evergreen shrub, 1-3 m tall.

Stems terete; branches grayish brown; shoots reddish, usually not verruculose, rarely scarcely black verruculose; internodes 3-6 cm; spines 3-fid, 1-4 cm, adaxially sulcate.

Leaves subsessile; leaf blade abaxially yellow-green or pale green, adaxially shiny, dark green, oblong-elliptic, 4-15 × 1.5-6.5 cm, thickly leathery, abaxially with conspicuously raised midvein, lateral and reticulate veins prominent, adaxially with impressed midvein, lateral veins slightly raised, reticulate veins indistinct, base cuneate, margin 15-25-spinose-serrate on each side, apex acute.

Flowers 4-10-fascicled. Pedicels 1-2 cm; bractlets red, ca. 2 × 2 mm. Sepals in 3 whorls; outer sepals with a red band along middle, ovate, ca. 3.5 × 3 mm, apex subacute; median sepals rhombic-elliptic, ca. 5 × 4.5 mm; inner sepals obovate, ca. 6.5 × 5 mm. Petals obovate, ca. 6 × 4.5 mm, base cuneate, with contiguous, orange glands, apex emarginate with rounded lobes. Stamens ca. 4.5 mm; anther connective truncate. Ovules 1 or 2. Berry black, oblong or oblong-ellipsoid, 6-8 × 4-6 mm, not pruinose, style not persistent.

Flowers Apr-May.

Fruits Jun-Nov.