Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees 5–10 m tall.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades orbicular 12–25 cm wide, 7-lobed or 9(11) lobed with shallow, angulate or deltate divisions. Base cordate with a usually closed sinus. Surfaces glabrate except lower surfaces densely pubescent near base and at apex of petioles. Margins entire or nearly so. Petioles usually as Iong as or longer than blades, deciduous with prominent scars. Stipules caducous.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, clustered near the ends of the branches, axillary, pedicels 3–9 cm long, articulate near middle and with a persistent bract, terminal nectaries absent; involucral bracts 3, broadly ovate, 40–60 mm long, glabrous, distinct or connate basally, entire or lobed, sparsely pilose toward base, apex obtuse–sinuate, accrescent and leathery in fruit. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx composed of connate sepals, cylindrical, irregularly 2–5 lobed, the lobes caducous, valvate in bud, the tube ca. 2 cm long, sparsely pilose with spreading, white to yellowish hairs, eventually glabrate. Corolla zygomorphic, corolla of 5 petals, brick–red, 10–15 cm long, obovate, curved in bud, densely yellowish silky pubescent, reflexed above at anthesis, twisted at base, adnate at base to staminal column. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, staminal column exserted, curved; antheriferous in upper 1/3-1/2, terminated by 5 teeth; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, 5-celled; ovules 1 per cell, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; style clavate, exceeding the staminal column, unbranched and stigmatically lobed at apex; stigma 5-lobed, sulcate, terminal or decurrent.

Fruit: Loculicidally dehiscent capsules; ovoid; up to 3.7 cm long; apex acuminate; woody. Seeds obovoid; 10-12 mm long; pubescent with hairs up to 10 mm long; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in the diverse mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 350–660 m.