Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unbranched palm-like trees 2-10 m tall;

Stems: Stems erect or ascending, 12 mm in diameter, light gray or brown, unarmed, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, well dispersed on the distal stem or congested into apical rosettes. Blades lanceolate, 8.5–12.0 cm long, 2.4–3.5 cm wide. Apex acute or acuminate. Base rounded or cuneate. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins coarsely serrate, undulate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 3.2–5 cm long, ⅓–⅖ as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, racemes 9–12–flowered, anauxotelic; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 7–8 mm long, rachis 15–16 mm long; bracts 0.7–1.2 mm long, pubescent, triangular or deltate, persistent, each subtending a pedicel; pedicels shorter than the supported flower 5-7 mm long, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 3.5–4.0 mm long, 2.5–3.0 mm in diameter, ca. 1/6 as long as corolla, obovoid. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx synsepalous, actinomorphic; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a glabrous hypanthium 1/10–⅓ as long as the corolla; lobes 5, 0.5–2.0 mm long, 0.3–0.7 mm wide, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium, glabrous. Corolla sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, glabrous, 16–30 mm long, greenish; tube gently curved, dorsally cleft to about the middle, 9–21 mm long, 1.2–1.7 mm tall at base, 2.2–3.8 mm tall above middle, one dorsal and 2 lateral knobs; lobes 5, inear triangular, valvate, spreading, equaling or shorter than the tube (rarely somewhat longer), acute or acuminate at apex, somewhat dimorphic, dorsal lobes 7–18 mm long, 0.9–1.7 mm wide, ⅓ as long as tube to half again as long; ventral lobes 5.5–15.0 mm long, 0.8–1.8 mm wide, usually connate for 1/4-1/2 their length. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filament tube 14–16 mm long; anther tube 1.5–1.7 mm in diameter, glabrous; dorsal anthers 8–9 mm long, ½–⅔ as long as filament tube; ventral anthers 5.0–5.5 mm long, with tufts of hairs 2.5–3.0 mm long at apex. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-loculed, crowned by an annular nectary; placentae axile; ovules many; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near the apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit a small purple fleshy thin-walled berry; 3.5–4.0 mm in diameter; globose. Seeds numerous; 0.8–1.0 mm long; 0.5–0.6 mm wide; grayish white; ellipsoid; compressed; dull; transversely rugose (Type G of Buss et al. 2001).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Cliffs.

Elevation Range: 1,524–1,829 m.