Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub.

Stems: Stems usually branched, erect or ascending, light gray or brown, unarmed, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, 5-20 mm diameter toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, scattered along distal portion of stem. Blades oblong or elliptic in outline, cleft or parted into 3–4 pairs of triangular segments 8–35 mm long and 8–20 mm wide, 10.5–19.5 cm long, 4.8–10.5 cm wide across the segments. Apex acute or acuminate. Base cuneate or attenuate, often with discrete lobules. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins of segments serrulate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 3.5–12.5 cm long, ⅓–⅗ as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–10–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 14–21 mm long, rachis 4–23 mm long; bracts ca. 1.3 mm long, glabrous, triangular or deltate (rarely becoming larger, foliaceous, oblanceolate), persistent, each subtending a pedice; pedicels 10–12 mm long, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 6–8 mm long, 4.2–4.8 mm in diameter, 1/8–1/6 as long as corolla, obovoid. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx synsepalous, actinomorphic; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a glabrous hypanthium 1/10–⅓ as long as the corolla; lobes 5, 1–3 mm long, 0.8–1.3 mm wide, glabrous, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium. Corolla sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, 35–45 mm long, white; tube strongly curved or arcuate, laterally compressed, dorsally cleft to about the middle with a small knob at the terminus of the cleft and 2 lateral knobs, 12–24 mm long, 1.5–2.0 mm tall at base, 3.5–4.2 mm tall above middle; lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, acute or acuminate at apex, equaling or shorter than the tube, somewhat dimorphic, dorsal lobes 18–30 mm long, 1.4–2.0 mm wide, ¾ to twice as long as tube; ventral lobes 16–24 mm long, 1.3–1.5 mm wide usually connate for ¼–1⁄2 their length. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filaments connate, free from the corolla, inserted on the rim of the hypanthium; filament tube 36–39 mm long; anther tube 2.2–2.5 mm in diameter, pubescent at base; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube, dorsal anthers 8.5–9.0 mm long, 1/5–¼ as long as filament tube, occluding the orifice of the tube, ventral anthers 6.5–7.0 mm long, with tufts of hairs 1.3–2.0 mm long at apex. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-loculed, crowned by an annular nectary; placentae axile; ovules many; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near the apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit a small pruple fleshy thin-walled berry; 12 mm long; obovoid. Seeds: mature seeds not seen.

Ploidy:

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