Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub, 1.8 m tall.

Stems: Stem glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblanceolate, 38.5–40.5 cm long, 11.5 cm wide. Apex acute. Base cuneate. Surfaces glabrous; upper surface green; lower surface pale green. Margins minutely denticulate. Petioles 7.8–8.5 cm long, 4 mm diam., glabrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence 11–20–flowered, densely short–pubescent; peduncle deflexed, 8–9 cm long, 5–7 mm diam.; rachis 2.5–4 cm long; bracts linear or narrowly triangular, 3 mm long, 1 mm wide, the apex acute. Flowers bisexual (perfect); pedicels 10–17 mm long, bibracteolate in the lower ⅓; bracteoles linear or narrowly triangular, 2 mm long. Hypanthium obovoid, deeply 10–sulcate, 10–11 mm long, 11–12 mm diam., densely short–pubescent. Calyx lobes triangular, 4–5 mm long, 3 mm wide; apex acute. Corolla bilabiate, 46–47 mm long, purple with lighter longitudinal stripes, short–pubescent; tube curved, 19 mm long, 7 mm diam, cleft dorsally for ⅔ its length; dorsal lobes linear, 32 mm long, 3 mm wide, spreading horizontally; ventral lip 19 mm long, cut to its middle into three linear lobes 3–4 mm wide (the middle one a little wider than the others) and acute at apex. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column slightly exserted, glabrous; filaments 35 mm long; anther tube 9 mm long, 3 mm diam., the lower 2 anthers with tufts of white hairs at apex. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries (immature) subglobose; 12 mm long; 14 mm diam.; purple; deeply 10–sulcate; crowned by the persistent calyx lobes. Seeds unknown.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Growing in wet forest.

Elevation Range: ca. 213 m.