Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Scandent or sprawling, rarely erect shrubs or trees.

Stems: Stems 1–3 m long, branches puberulent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to elliptic–ovate or elliptic, 4–12 cm long, 2–6.5 cm wide, with disciform cystoliths. Apex abruptly acuminate or long-acuminate. Base cuneate to very broadly so. Upper surfaces sparsely appressed pubescent; lower surfaces moderately pubescent, the hairs spreading, curved, nearly translucent, randomly or apically directed, 0.2–0.4 mm long; grayish to greenish on lower surface, thin. Margins entire. Palmately 3-veined from base. Petioles 1–2 cm long, densely pubescent. Stipules small, intrapetiolar.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary clusters, staminate flowers on pedicels 0–1 mm long; pistillate flowers sessile. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of staminate flowers densely covered with appressed erect hairs and shorter, erect, uncinate hairs, lobes 4, boat-shaped, lobes 34.5 mm long, apex long–acuminate, coherent in bud, separating at anthesis; pistillate Calyx lobes connate into perigynium, densely covered with appressed to erect hairs and shorter, erect, uncinate hairs, apex unlobed, collar-like or 3–4-toothed. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 4. Staminate flowers staminal filaments folded elastically in bud, reflexed when pollen is shed, strap–shaped, 2–5 mm long; anthers reniform, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Pollen white. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), pseudomonomerous, 1-celled; ovule 1, basal; style 1; stigma 4–7 mm long, receptive all around. Staminate flower ovary vestigial and sterile.

Fruit: Achenes red; 2–3 mm long; apical portion depressed–conical; separated from basal portion by a complete constriction; basal portion sometimes somewhat lobed. Seeds 1 per achene; ovoid; with a lateral; transverse constriction.

Ploidy: 2n = 26

Habitat: Dry forest; open lava flows; and subalpine forest.

Elevation Range: 300–1,470 m.