Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Stout, weakly climbing, evergreen shrubs.

Stems: Stems often 30–40 dm long, forming impenetrable thickets several m wide, primocanes usually erect, covered with usually spreading prickles up to 5 mm long, floricanes covered with stout, recurved, longitudinally elongate prickles up to 6 mm long and densely covered with slender, spreading prickles, also sparsely to moderately pilose.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (palmate). Alternate. Blades broadly obcordate, leaflets 3, the terminal one largest, usually 6–8 cm long, 5–6.5 cm wide, those of the primocanes slightly smaller. Upper surfaces sparsely pilose; lower surfaces densely velvety pilose, midrib with a few small, stout, recurved prickles and smaller straight ones; thick, petiolules 1.5–3 cm long, petiolules densely covered with long, straight prickles and scattered stout, recurved prickles, also sparsely to moderately pilose. Margins serrate. Petioles densely covered with long, straight prickles and scattered stout, recurved prickles, also sparsely to moderately pilose. Stipules adnate to base of petioles.

Flowers: Flowers in short, terminal panicles, tomentose and covered throughout with short prickles, pedicels 3–10 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Receptacle raised, margins bearing sepals, petals, and stamens. Calyx lobes 5, persistent, distinct, imbricate. Corolla of 5 petals, white, distinct, obovate, imbricate, 7–9 mm long. Stamens numerous; filaments slender; anthers dithecal. Ovary superior, inserted on the raised receptacle, 1-celled; ovules 2 per cell; style filiform, subterminal, persistent.

Fruit: Fruit fleshy; juicy drupelets; crowded together on receptacle; yellow; depressed–hemispherical; ca. 0.8 cm long; glabrous. Seeds 1 per drupelet.

Ploidy: 2n = 14

Habitat:

Elevation Range: 1,060–1,220 m.