Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect shrubs or small trees 2–4(–8) m tall.

Stems: Branches and petioles sparsely covered with spreading, smooth hairs 5–15 mm long, but often intermixed with or replaced by appressed, smooth, subulate hairs usually 1 mm or less long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, decussate. Blades ovate–lanceolate, (8–)10–20 cm long, 2–4.5(–6.5) cm wide. Apex acuminate to attenuate. Base obtuse to rounded. Upper surfaces moderately covered with hairs that are adnate to the epidermis for most of their length; lower surfaces strigillose with scattered appressed, lanceolate scales on the elevated nerves. Margins entire. 5(–7)-veined. Petioles 10–20(–30) mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2–7–flowered, pedicels 10–15 mm long in fruit, bracts and bracteoles elliptic to lanceolate, 7–15 mm long, 3–9 mm wide, early deciduous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Hypanthium covered with spreading or incurved, smooth, ± basally flattened hairs. Calyx lobes 5(-7), triangular to triangular-lanceolate, 6-12 × ca. 4 mm, strigose at ridges. Corolla of 6 petals, purplish pink, 2.5–4.7 cm long, 2.7–3.5 cm wide. Stamens twice as many as petals, dimorphic; anthers subulate, opening by a pore; anthers of larger Stamens 12–15 mm long, connective prolonged 12–16 mm with an appendage ca. 2 mm long; anthers of smaller Stamens 9–11 mm long. Ovary inferior, distinct at apex but adnate to the inner hypanthial wall by (4–)5(–7) septa, 5–7-celled, placentation axile; ovules numerous; style simple; stigma terminal.

Fruit: Berries 6–celled; 15–17 mm long; irregularly dehiscent. Seeds cochleate; 0.5–1 mm long; minutely punctate; endosperm absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 56

Habitat: Mesic sites.

Elevation Range: