Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Gynodioecious or subdioecious, erect shrubs to small trees 3–8 m tall, usually glabrous.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or in whorls of 3–4 per node. Blades elliptic to oblanceolate, 5–15.5 cm long, 2–5.5 cm wide. Blades subcoriaceous. Margins minutely to coarsely serrate. Petioles 0.8–2.5 cm long. Stipules triangular, often connate, 0.8–1.2 mm long, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers numerous, erect, in terminal, branched panicles. Perfect flowers pedicels 8–12 mm long, floral tube 4–8 mm long, with a smooth to irregularly lobed nectary at base; pistillate flowers floral tube 3–5.5 mm long. Calyx of perfect flowers with sepals rose purple, 5–10 mm long, spreading to reflexed at anthesis; sepals of pistillate flowers 3.5–7 mm long. Petals of perfect flowers lavender, 4–10 mm long, erect to spreading pistillate flowers petals 2.3– 4.5 mm long. Stamens opposite the sepals in perfect flowers, 4–13 mm long, those opposite the petals 2–11 mm long; pistillate flowers staminal filaments opposite the sepals 1.5–4.9 mm long, those opposite the petals 1–4 mm long. Pollen shed singly. Ovary inferior, as many cells and carpels as sepals; ovules anatropous; style 1; stigma capitate, globose, or clavate, 4-lobed to subentire.

Fruit: Berries dark purple; glaucous; subglobose; 4–9 mm long. Seeds small; endosperm absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 22

Habitat: Wet forests.

Elevation Range: