Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs.

Stems: Stems rounded to angular, pubescent with multicellular hairs or glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, probably borne on upper 5–7 nodes. Those leaves of a pair slightly unequal, symmetrical or nearly so, broadly elliptic, ovate, or suborbicular, 9.5–21 cm long, 5.5–9.5 cm wide. Apex long-acuminate. Base cuneate. Upper surfaces sparsely to moderately hirtellous; lower surfaces moderately velvety pilose, especially along veins, the hairs rust–colored, blades chartaceous. Margins coarsely serrate. Petioles 2.5–7.5 cm long, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers (1–)3 in open, lax, umbelliform cymes arising in the leaf axils, densely villous throughout, peduncles slender, 20–50 mm long, pedicels 14–20 mm long, elongating to 20–28 mm long in fruit, bracts foliaceous, distinct or occasionally connate, ovate, 9–12 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–5(6)-lobed, nearly actinomorphic, green(?), 9–15 mm long, cleft ca. 1⁄2 its length, the lobes elliptic–ovate, both surfaces densely villous, apex acute to short–acuminate, deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, conspicuously exserted from calyx, tube cylindrical, the tube straight or curved, 15–20 mm long, sparsely to moderately pilose, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, the lobes imbricate in bud, upper lobes ca. 3 mm long, lower lobes ca. 5–6 mm long. Stamens 5, inserted about halfway up corolla tube, the 2 upper Stamens fertile, others staminodial, +/– with abortive anthers; fertile anthers coherent positioned in throat of corolla tube, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by apical pores. Ovary superior, oblong–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, placentas 2, ± intruded, rarely joined in center and dividing ovary into 2 cells; ovules numerous, anatropous, sparsely to moderately puberulent, apex rounded or with a stylar beak; style 6–8 mm long, glabrous or with a few scattered hairs; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Fruit a fleshy or firm berry; white; conical–ellipsoid; 1.8–2.3 cm long; puberulent; often tipped by the persistent stylar beak. Seeds numerous; ellipsoid; minute; 0.2–0.3 mm long; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Known only from scattered collections in wet forest.

Elevation Range: 910–920 m.