Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Slender or shrubby trees up to 6 m tall, new growth pale brown tomentose.

Stems: Stems 0.5–5 mm in diameter near apex, internodes up to 3 mm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate, 5.9–27 cm long, 3–13 cm wide. Apex acute to obtuse, rarely acuminate. Base usually rounded. Surfaces glabrous or pubescent, somewhat coriaceous. Margins entire and usually without developed marginal ribs. Lateral veins 15–20 pairs. Petioles 1–17 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in single axillary panicles, these 1–2 branched, reddish brown pubescent or glabrous. Panicles 16–65 cm long, simple or compound, with 10–20 primary branches. Each panicle branch subtended by 1 bract. Gynodioecious (with bisexual (perfect)–flowered plants and female plants in each population). flowers several to numerous per branch, internodes between individual flowers 1–5 mm long. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, imbricate, subequal; 1.5–2.25 mm long discernibly 3–7-veined. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens and staminodes 5; filaments connate at base to form a short, membranous tube with short, rounded flaps of tissue alternating with the filaments; anthers exserted at anthesis. Ovary superior, globose or urceolate, 1.5–2 mm long; style absent or very short; stigmas 2, straight or recurved, nearly as long as the ovary, with glands on the inner surface.

Fruit: Indehiscent utricle. Seeds black and shiny; lenticular ca. 1.5 mm long at maturity.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in wet and mesic forest.

Elevation Range: (180–)300–1,160 m.