Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small, erect to sprawling, glabrous, many-branched shrubs.

Stems: Stems 4–angled or 4–costate, 1–3(–4) dm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, usually closely spaced and overlapping, not becoming reduced above. Blades lanceolate to ovate–cordate, 1–4 cm long, 0.7–2.3 cm wide. Surfaces glabrous, Blades coriaceous. Margins entire, slightly revolute. Lateral veins strongly ascending. Petioles 0–0.2 cm long. Stipules deltate, strongly carinate, 2–3 mm long, apex mucronate.

Flowers: Flowers in narrow corymbose inflorescences, sometimes several on contiguous branches giving the appearance of 1 larger inflorescence, pedicels 2-8 mm long, inflorescences subtended by a pair of cordate bracts 0.6-1.5 cm long; hypanthium turbinate to cup–shaped, 1-1.5 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or pistillate. Calyx 4-5-lobed, lobes weakly foliaceous, bluntly ovate, 1–4 mm long, 1–2 mm wide, often variable in size on a single plant, enlarging to 4.5–5.5 mm long in fruit. Corolla 4-5-lobed, white, tinged purplish pink toward tips, fleshy, salverform–funnelform, the tube 8–11 mm long, the limb not quadrangular in bud, but apex depressed, the lobes 5–6 mm long, inflexed; nectary disc present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, sessile, attached slightly below corolla throat; anthers sessile or on short filaments, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior or partly so, 2(-4)-locular; ovules few to numerous on fleshy placentas near middle of septum; style as many as carpels, cylindrical to filiform, enlarged in upper part, woolly pubescent near middle (hairs long and crinkly), slightly 2–lobed, terminal; stigma bilobed or subcapitate, included or exserted.

Fruit: Capsules subglobose; ca. 3.3–4 mm long; ca. 3.5–4 mm in diameter; dehiscing loculicidally across disk; later ca. ½ to base; pyrenes separating septicidally; endocarp moderately sclerified; disk slightly raised. Seeds dull brown; subpeltate; bluntly angled; darkly granulate under high magnification; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Known only from on and at base of cliff faces; rock outcrops; and ledges.

Elevation Range: 715–825 m.