Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees up to 8(–10) m tall.

Stems: Mature stems glabrous to glabrate, young stems, petioles, and calyces copiously yellowish stellate pubescent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate–elliptic to broadly ovate, usually 4–15(–30) cm long, 2–11(–25) cm wide. Apex acute to subacuminate. Base obtuse to subcordate or cuneate. Upper surfaces glabrous or glabrate; lower surfaces glabrate to densely pubescent; blades coriaceous. Margins usually deeply crenate. Petioles usually less than ½ the length of blades; sometimes copiously yellowish stellate pubescent. Stipules subulate to filiform, 5–10 mm long, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, borne near the ends of the branches, pedicels stout, 1.5–6(–9) cm long, articulate; involucral bracts 5–7, reflexed to erect, linear-lanceolate to narrowly oblong, 5–15(–25) mm long, 1–2 mm wide, distinct or connate basally or adnate to calyx at base. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx tubular, 5-lobed or 5-parted, (1.5–)2–3(–3.4) cm long, lobes deltate–acute, 3–10 mm long; sometimes copiously yellowish stellate pubescent, lobes valvate in bud; caudate Calyx teeth. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, corolla of 5 petals, flaring, white, occasionally with a pink tinge on abaxial side, sometimes aging pinkish, obovate, (5–) 6–11(–13) cm long from point of insertion, distinct from each other but adnate basally to the staminal column into a tube 1–3(–4) cm long, convolute in bud, lower surface usually densely pubescent. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, exserted, white, 8–19 cm long; filaments arising in upper ⅓–½ of staminal column, white, spreading, 0.8–3 cm long; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, 5-celled or rarely appearing 10-celled by a vertical partition, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 3 or more per cell; style exceeding the staminal column, 5-branched, each branch terminated by an expanded stigma.

Fruit: Loculicidally dehiscent capsules; enclosed by the calyx; chartaceous; obovoid–apiculate; ca. 1.7–2.5 cm long; glabrous; endocarp smooth; shiny; exocarp reticulate–veined. Seeds angular-reniform or rounded-reniform; ca. 4 mm long; yellowish brown tomentose; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 80*; 84*

Habitat: Occurring in primarily mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 300–800 m.