Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees 2–8 m tall.

Stems: Bark pale gray, sap milky and somewhat watery, not abundant.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, distichous. Blades narrowly lanceolate to oblong–lanceolate, oblong–elliptic, or sometimes ovate, (3.5–)6–13(–16.5) cm long, (2–)2.5–5(–6.5) cm wide. Surfaces puberulent, especially along veins, simple dark green on upper surface; lower surfaces paler, glossy, thin, chartaceous. Margins serrulate. Pinnately veined, upper surface glabrous, lower surface with yellowish raised veins. Petioles 0.3–1 cm long, puberulent, sometimes densely so. Stipules narrowly triangular, 2–4 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers in spikes; staminate spikes (2–)4–11 cm long, most flowers blooming nearly at the same time, peduncles 3–10 mm long, densely arachnoid puberulent; pistillate spikes 0.5–1(–2.5) cm long, peduncles 1–3 mm long. Flowers unisexual (plants nearly always dioecious, rarely monoecious); each staminate and pistillate flower whitish green. Calyx of staminate flowers with (3)4(5) sepals; sepals ovate, ca. 1–1.3 mm long, connate ca. ⅓ their length, puberulent, apex somewhat arachnoid pubescent, valvate. Calyx of pistillate flowers with 4 sepals; sepals ovate, ca. 1.5–2 mm long, puberulent, margins ciliate. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flowers 4; filaments 2–3 mm long, inflexed in bud; anthers reniform; staminodes absent in pistillate flowers. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), green, asymmetrically ovoid, somewhat laterally compressed. Staminate flower pistillode ca. 0.5 mm long.

Fruit: Drupes 4–5 developing per spike; brownish purple; shiny; thinly fleshy; subglobose; laterally compressed; 8–11 mm long; mesocarp whitish; endocarp ligneous; 5–6 mm long; asymmetrical. Seeds large; subglobose; 4–12 mm long.

Ploidy: 2n = 28

Habitat: Mesic forest; sometimes in the upper portions of dry forest or drier portions of wet forest.

Elevation Range: 300–1,680 m.