Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small trees up to 8 m tall.

Stems: Young branches yellowish to grayish brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades obovate, oblanceolate, elliptic–oblong, or occasionally suborbicular, 2–12.6 cm long, 1.1–7.3 cm wide. Apex obtuse to rounded. Base acute to truncate or rounded. Surfaces glabrous or occasionally puberulent or hirtellous, particularly along veins, chartaceous, domatia usually absent. Margins entire. Lateral veins 5–11 pairs, tertiary veins often forming a conspicuous network. Petioles 0–1.2 cm long. Stipules obovate or deltate–obovate, up to 6 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with verticillate branching, branches up to 18 mm long, always shorter on the upper node, each branch usually terminated by a 3–flowered cymule, peduncles 0–5 cm long, lateral flowers of each cymule with small pedicels and the central one sessile. Flowers insect-pollinated, unisexual, 4–5-merous, usually heterostylous. Calyx 3–3.5 mm long, 4-6-lobed, hirsute, often densely so, with long, white hairs, truncate at apex or with acute lobes, tube usually shorter than hypanthium. Corolla white, 4-6-lobed, tube 2–3 mm long at anthesis, somewhat expanded toward apex, throat glabrous, the lobes usually thick and fleshy, spreading, ovate, 3–5 mm long, often hirsute at apex and along dorsal or outer surface; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments of staminate flowers 1–2 mm long, inserted on the corolla tube or throat; anthers attached at the base, exserted at anthesis in functionally staminate flowers, elliptic–oblong or ovate–oblong, 0.7–1 mm long, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous; 2–2.5 mm long at anthesis; style as many as carpels, 2–3 mm long, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, divaricate, lobed or capitate, 0.7–1.1 mm long, often hirsute or pubescent, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit ellipsoid–pyriform; 12–18 mm long; with persistent calyx; sometimes with the persistent and expanded disk protruding; pyrenes 1-2(-4); hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; invaginated on the ventral or inner face into a T-shape in cross section; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to occasionally dry forest.

Elevation Range: 360–940 m.