Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub 1.5-3 m tall.

Stems: Stems erect-arching.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades oblanceolate-oblong, 10-25 cm long. Apex abruptly tapered. Surfaces glossy, dark green. Margins wavy. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in drooping, open panicles or racemes bear 1" diameter flowers, each flower +/- bracteolate. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, green flushed red; fruit centered on a red, star-shaped, spreading calyx. Corolla nearly actinomorphic or slightly irregular, white with a lime green center to the 0.5" long tube, salverform or funnelform, slightly to greatly exceeding the calyx, 5-lobed, the lobes subequal; nectary disk often present at base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4(5), in 2 pairs, inserted on corolla tube and usually long–exserted, aligned with the sinuses; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, occasionally 1 theca reduced or absent or the 2 thecae confluent, occasionally the connective elongate and thus separating the thecae. Ovary superior, rarely on a gynophore, 4-celled; ovules 1 per cell, attached laterally; style arising between lobes, placentation basal-axile; ovules 1 per ovary lobe, anatropous to hemitropous of apotropous; style 1, usually cleft; stigmas 2, sometimes 1 reduced and vestigial.

Fruit: Drupes black; weakly 4-lobed; separating at maturity into 4 pyrenes or sometimes cohering in pairs; subtended or enclosed by the persistent calyx; exocarp ± fleshy; endocarp bony or crustaceous. Seeds oblong; with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: