Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Succulent perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems slightly woody at base, basal leafy portion decumbent, quadrangular (at least when dry), 2.5–4 dm long, up to 8 cm long, rarely considerably more, glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, clustered toward base of stem, but cauline on new shoots. Blades ovate to obovate or broadly elliptic, sometimes lanceolate or oblanceolate, 3.5–8.5(–13.5) cm long, (1.5–)2–5.5(–7.5) cm wide. Apex bluntly acute or acuminate. Base cuneate to broadly cuneate, sessile and slightly connate around stem. Surfaces glabrous, upper surface glossy, lower surface dull or glossy; blades fleshy. Margins entire. Lateral veins impressed on upper surface, glabrous. Sessile. Stipules adnate to thickened leaf bases, forming a sheath 4–5 mm long, keeled, the keel prolonged into a fleshy mucro (2–)3–4 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence of scapes 20–25(–30) cm long in subumbellate, corymbose cymes, these sometimes lax and branches elongating monochasially, sometimes with small lateral inflorescences, pedicels 0–11(–20) mm long, inflorescences subtended by broadly cordate to orbicular bracts ca. 2(–4) cm long; hypanthium obscurely quadrangular, ca. 4 mm long. Flowers insect-pollinated, bisexual (perfect). Calyx 4-5-lobed, lobes foliaceous, oblong–ovate, (2–)4–6 mm long, (1–)1.5–3 mm wide, enlarging to ca. 6–7 mm long and 3–4(–7) mm wide in fruit. Corolla white, fleshy, salverform, the tube 8–11 mm long, several times longer than wide, the limb not quadrangular in bud, but apex depressed, the lobes 4–5 mm long, inflexed in bud; nectary disc present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted in corolla tube 5–7 mm above base; anthers sessile or on short filaments, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior.

Fruit: Capsules obconical; 6–10 mm long; 5–9 mm in diameter; mesocarp firm–fleshy; exfoliating when dry; the remaining endocarp and vascular tissue depressed–subglobose; 4–6(–10) mm long; 5–7(–10) mm in diameter; dehiscing loculicidally across disk; pyrenes tardily disintegrating septicidally; endocarp weakly sclerified; disk slightly raised. Seeds dark brown; peltate to broadly cuneiform; irregularly and bluntly angled; black papillose; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring on wet rocky sea cliffs and coastal talus slopes; usually within salt spray.

Elevation Range: 2–6 m.