Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 0.3–2 m tall.

Stems: Stems unbranched or sparingly branched from base, muricate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades obovate, blades 22–60 cm long, 10–26 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Base cuneate to truncate. Upper surfaces green and glabrous; lower surfaces pale green, pubescent and sparsely muricate. Margins callose–denticulate. Petioles 8–25 cm long, muricate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 8–40–flowered, horizontal to pendent, pubescent, peduncle plus rachis 40–280 mm long, pedicels 10–28 mm long, bracts narrowly oblong, 9–20 mm long, apex obtuse; hypanthium obconical, 5–6 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect); hypanthium obconical, 5–6 mm long. Calyx 5-lobed, lobes narrowly oblong, 4–10 mm long, 2–4 mm wide, distinct or rarely connate, much shorter to somewhat longer than hypanthium, rarely up to as long as the corolla, pubescent, apex obtuse; tube adnate to ovary. Corolla white, striped or suffused with magenta, 32–42 mm long, 5–9 mm wide, pubescent, the tube curved, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading, erect, ¼–1⁄2 as long as the tube. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous with apical tufts of white hairs on the lower 2, 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; globose; 8–10 mm long. 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 forest.

Elevation Range: 240–400 m.