Cowiea borneensis is a plant in the Rubiaceae family, native to north east Borneo.

[3] It is a climbing shrub, having very long slender, spiked inflorescences with very small pentamerous flowers with short thick club-shaped (clavate) styles.

The corolla is sparsely hairy outside, but inside, the throat is densely bearded, but otherwise without hairs.

[1] Wernham reports the specimen he was describing as having been found in Tenom beside a railway track in a marshy section of the forest at an altitude of 700 feet (210 m).

[1] It was first described in 1914 by Herbert Fuller Wernham,[3] and is the type species of the genus, (named thus to honour William Clark Cowie, a chairman of the North Borneo Company), with the species epithet, borneensis, describing the plant as coming from Borneo.