Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub 2.5-3.5 m tall.

Stems: Stems glabrous.

Roots: Suckering from roots.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Whorled. Blades elliptic to oblong, 12.5-25.5 x 3.5-12.5 cm. Upper surfaces deep dull green, underside puple-red. Margins entire or variously dentate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences in terminal, many-flowered dense heads, bracts inconspicuous. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or sometimes unisexual (and then plants gynodioecious or rarely dioecious); odorless. Calyx bell-shaped, 0.25" long, 5-toothed. Corolla nearly actinomorphic or slightly irregular, salver-shaped, tube 3.5-4" long, pinkish, limb 5-lobed, recurved, white; nectary disk often present at base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4(5), in 2 pairs, inserted on corolla tube and usually long–exserted, aligned with the sinuses; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, occasionally 1 theca reduced or absent or the 2 thecae confluent, occasionally the connective elongate and thus separating the thecae. Ovary superior, rarely on a gynophore, 4-celled; ovules 1 per cell, attached laterally; style arising between lobes, placentation basal-axile; ovules 1 per ovary lobe, anatropous to hemitropous of apotropous; style 1, usually cleft; stigmas 2, sometimes 1 reduced and vestigial.

Fruit: Fruit not observed. Seeds unknown.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: