Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Trees up to 8(–25) m tall.
Stems:
Bark thick, corrugated.
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Opposite.
Blades lanceolate to elliptic–lanceolate or narrowly elliptic, flat or slightly undulate, 7–22 cm long, (1.5–) 2.2–6(–7) cm wide.
Apex acute to acuminate or rarely obtuse.
Base rounded to cuneate.
Upper surfaces glossy, glabrous and glandular–dotted; lower surfaces dull and pale, glabrous to sparsely puberulent especially along veins, and glandular–dotted with peltate glands; coriaceous.
Margins not thickened, entire.
Petioles 0.6–1.3 cm long, thickened toward base.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers usually 7–11 in axillary, decussate inflorescences usually 24 cm long, elongating to 3–7 cm long in fruit, glabrous to densely puberulent, pedicels 3–4 mm long, elongating to 5–9 mm long in fruit, bracts lanceolate to ovate, slender, ca. 1.5 mm long, caducous.
Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic.
Calyx short, 4-toothed, teeth ca. 0.6–1.1 mm long, entire to suberose, valvate.
Corolla 4-lobed, the lobes imbricate in bud, elliptic, rotate, ca. 2–3 mm long.
Stamens 4, Stamens inserted on corolla tube alternate with the lobes; anthers dithecal, oriented back–to–back, opening by longitudinal slits.
Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, 2-celled, placentation axile; ovules 2 per cell; stigma 2-lobed, dry.
Fruit:
Drupes green when immature; becoming purplish then bluish black at maturity; rather dry; ovoid to ovoid–conical; 1.6–2.2 cm long.
Seeds 1 per fruit.
Ploidy:
2n = 44
Habitat:
Dry to mesic forest.
Elevation Range:
30–1,300 m.