Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Robust shrubs or small trees up to 8(–10) m tall.

Stems: Mature stems glabrous to glabrate, young stems, leaves, pedicels, and calyces moderately coarsely pubescent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate–elliptic to broadly ovate, usually 10–20(–30) cm long, 2–11(–25) cm wide. Apex acute to subacuminate. Base obtuse to subcordate or cuneate. Surfaces moderately coarsely pubescent; blades coriaceous. Margins entire or dentate throughout or near apex. Petioles usually less than ½ the length of blades; sometimes copiously yellowish stellate pubescent. Stipules subulate to filiform, 5–10 mm long, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers in solitary, borne near the ends of the branches, pedicels moderately coarsely pubescent, stout, 1.5–6(–9) cm long, articulate; involucral bracts 5–7, apparently appressed to the calyx, linear-lanceolate to narrowly oblong, 10–25 mm long, 1–2 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx tubular, 5-lobed or 5-parted, 2–3.4 cm long, lobes deltate–acute, 3–10 mm long, moderately coarsely pubescent. Corolla catinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, corolla of 5 petals, flaring, white, occasionally with a pink tinge on abaxial side, sometimes aging pinkish, (7–)8– 11(–13) cm long from point of insertion, obovate, adnate basally to the staminal column into a tube 1–3(–4) cm long. Stamens 5 to numberous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, exserted, pinkish to dark red, rarely white, 8–19 cm long; filaments arising in upper ⅓–½ of staminal column, red or white, spreading, 0.8–3 cm long; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, 5-celled or rarely appearing 10-celled by a vertical partition, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 3 or more per cell; style exceeding the staminal column, 5-branched, each branch terminated by an expanded stigma; stigmas terminal or decurrent.

Fruit: Loculicidally dehiscent capsules; chartaceous; obovoid–apiculate; ca. 1.7–2.5 cm long; glabrous; endocarp smooth; shiny; exocarp reticulate–veined. Seeds angular-reniform or rounded-reniform; ca. 4 mm long; yellowish brown tomentose; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 80*; 84*

Habitat: Occurring in primarily mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 300–800 m.