Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Treelet or tree (rarely sparingly branched), 1.2–4.5 m tall.

Stems: Stems erect or ascending, 4.5–23 mm in diameter below the dense apical rosette of leaves, usually unbranched, light gray or brown, unarmed, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, in a dense apical rosette. Blades ovate or lanceolate, 5.7–19.0 cm long, 2–11 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base truncate, rounded, or obtuse in large leaves, cuneate in small ones. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins coarsely biserrate or crenate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 2–15 cm long, 1⁄2 as long to as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–20–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 3–18 mm long; rachis 3–15 mm long; bracts 0.7–1.2 mm long, triangular or deltate(rarely becoming foliaceous, oblanceolate, 8 mm long, 1.3 mm wide, acute at apex, attenuate at base), pubescent, persistent, each subtending a pedicel; pedicels 3–13 mm long; hypanthium 3–7 mm long, 2.2–5.0 mm in diameter, ⅐–¼ as long as corolla, obovoid or ellipsoid, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx lobes 0.5–2.0 mm long, 0.3–0.7 mm wide, glabrous. Corolla 16–30 mm long; tube 9–21 mm long, 1.2–1.7 mm tall at base, 2.2–3.8 mm tall above middle; 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. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filaments connate, free from the corolla, inserted on the rim of the hypanthium; filament tube 17–24 mm long; anther tube 1.3–2.0 mm in diameter, glabrous or sparsely pubescent at base; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube, the dorsal three a little longer than the ventral pair, occluding the orifice of the tube, dorsal anthers 5–7 mm long, 1/5–⅓ as long as filament tube, ventral anthers 3.5–5.7 mm long, with tufts of hairs 1.3–2.0 mm long at apex; the surface of the tube glabrous or sparsely pubescent. 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; 5–12 mm in diameter; globose. Seeds numerous; 1.0–1.5 mm long; 0.5–0.7 mm wide; grayish white; ellipsoid; compressed; dull; transversely rugose (Type G of Buss et al. 2001).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Cliffs; rocky slopes; and exposures in mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 300–610 m.