Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub, 1.2–1.5 m tall.

Stems: Stems usually branched, erect or ascending, light gray or brown, unarmed, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, 7 mm in diameter, moderately leafy toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, scattered along distal portion of stem. Blades oblong, 13.0–14.5 cm long, 3.1–3.6 cm wide. Apex acute. Base attenuate. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins serrulate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 2.5–2.8 cm long, ca. 1/5 as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–6–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 4-5 mm long; rachis 4-5 mm long; bracts ca. 1.1 mm long, glabrous, triangular or deltate (rarely becoming larger, foliaceous, oblanceolate), persistent, each subtending a pedicel; pedicels ca. 5 mm long, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 7 mm long, 5 mm in diameter, ca. 1/7 as long as corolla, broadly ellipsoid. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx synsepalous, actinomorphic; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a glabrous hypanthium 1/10–1/3 as long as the corolla; lobes 5, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1.2 mm long, ca. 0.5 mm wide, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium, glabrous. Corolla sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, 50–55 mm long, white, glabrous; tube strongly curved or arcuate, laterally compressed, dorsally cleft to about the middle, 36–40 mm long, 1.5–2.5 mm tall at base, 4.2–6.5 mm tall above middle, with a single dorsal knob at the terminus of the cleft; lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, equaling or shorter than the tube, acute or acuminate at apex, somewhat dimorphic, dorsal lobes 14-15 mm long, 1.5-1.8 mm wide, 1/3-2/5 as long as tube; ventral lobes 11-12 mm long, 1.5-1.6 mm wide, usually connate for ¼–1⁄2 their length. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filament tube 47-50 mm long ; filaments connate, free from the corolla, inserted on the rim of the hypanthium; anther tube 2.4-2.6 mm in diameter, glabrous; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube, the dorsal three ca. 8 mm long, 1/6 as long as filament tube, occluding the orifice of the tube, the ventral pair 5.0-5.5 mm long, with tufts of hairs 1.5-2.0 mm long at apex. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-loculed, crowned by an annular nectary; placentae axile; ovules many; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near the apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit not seen. Seeds not seen.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: