Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 1–3.2 m tall.

Stems: Stems unbranched or sparingly branched, muricate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades pinnately divided, blades 27–58 cm long, 14–32 cm wide (across the segments), segments 9–12 per side, oblong, lanceolate, narrowly triangular, or narrowly ovate, 0.8–5 cm wide. Apices of leaf segments acuminate and apiculate. Upper surfaces glabrous, rarely sparsely pubescent or muricate; lower surfaces glabrous or muricate along the midrib, rarely densely pubescent. Margins of segments irregularly lobed to irregularly cleft, the lobes acute to obtuse, apiculate. Petioles 8–32 cm long, muricate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 6–12–flowered, peduncles 15–75 mm long, pedicels 20–50 mm long, bracts linear to lanceolate or narrowly oblong, 12–35 mm long, 1–3 mm wide; hypanthium obconical, 7–16 mm long, 3–8 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes ovate to lanceolate, overlapping at base, 10–44 mm long, 4–14 mm wide, or linear to narrowly triangular, separated at base by narrow sinuses, 3–13 mm long, 1–2 mm wide, or rarely connate 7-25 mm from the base forming an irregularly 5-lobed tube 20-30 mm long, 8-12 mm wide; tube adnate to ovary. Corolla purplish or greenish to yellowish white, often suffused or striped with magenta, 55–80 mm long, 5–10 mm wide, glabrous or very sparsely pubescent, rarely densely pubescent, the tube arcuate, the lobes spreading, ¼–1⁄2 as long as the tube. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate, staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous or sometimes pubescent at base, all 5 (very rarely only the lower 2) with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. 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 orange; obovoid to ellipsoid; 18–30 mm long; 8–15 mm wide; crowned by the persistent calyx lobes. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 200–730 m.