Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 2–3 m tall.

Stems: Stems unbranched to few–branched, rounded to angular, pubescent with multicellular hairs or glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, widely spaced, borne on upper 3–6 nodes. Those leaves of a pair unequal, asymmetrical to symmetrical, suborbicular to ovate, 12–39 cm long, 3–19 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base abruptly constricted and decurrent. Upper surfaces rugose and glabrous; lower surfaces moderately covered with white, hemispherical, subsessile glands, rarely also sparsely short–villous along principal veins, blades chartaceous. Margins coarsely crenate to serrate. Lower surface with conspicuously raised reticulate veins. Petioles 2–7 cm long, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 5–15 in dense umbelliform cymes arising in the leaf axils at a few nodes below the leaves, moderately covered with subsessile glands throughout, peduncles stout, 2–8 mm long, pedicels slender, 7–25 mm long, bracts lanceolate, distinct or occasionally connate, 5–17 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–5(6)-lobed, nearly actinomorphic, green, 12–22 mm long, cleft nearly to base, the lobes linear, moderately to sparsely covered with subsessile glands, glabrous within, deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, tube subcylindrical, slightly curved above middle, 18–20 mm long, enlarging to ca. 8–9 mm in diameter medially, sparsely covered with subsessile glands, more densely so in bud, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, the lobes imbricate in bud, upper lobes suborbicular, 5–6 mm long, 4–5.5 mm wide, lower lobes elliptic, 7–9 mm long, 6–7.5 mm wide, strongly reflexed. Stamens 5, inserted about halfway up corolla tube, the 2 upper Stamens fertile, others staminodial, +/– with abortive anthers; fertile anthers coherent positioned in throat of corolla tube, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by apical pores. Ovary superior, oblong–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, placentas 2, ± intruded, rarely joined in center and dividing ovary into 2 cells; ovules numerous, anatropous, glabrous, apex rounded or with a stylar beak; style 10–11 mm long, covered with subsessile glands; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Fruit a fleshy or firm berry; white; ovoid; 1–1.5 cm long; covered with subsessile glands; often tipped by the persistent stylar beak. Seeds numerous; ellipsoid; minute; 0.3–0.4 mm long; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Apparently rare in moist; shaded gulch–bottoms and along streams in disturbed mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: 460–760 m.