Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1–5(–9) m tall.

Stems: Young branches grayish yellow, glabrous, current year branchlets purplish red, white pubescent, terminal buds silvery gray sericeous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades elliptic, oblong-elliptic, or oblong, 5-14 × 2-7.5 cm. Apex bluntly acute to acuminate and with an obtuse tip. Base cuneate to broadly cuneate. Blades leathery, abaxially pale green and glabrous or pubescent, adaxially dark green, shiny, and glabrous. Margins serrate to serrulate. Midvein ± raised on both surfaces, secondary veins 7-9 on each side of midvein and ± raised on both surfaces, reticulate veins visible on both surfaces. Petioles 4-7 mm, pubescent, glabrescent. Stipules absent

Flowers: Flowers axillary, solitary or to 3 in a cluster, 2.5-3.5 cm in diam. Flowers perfect. Pedicel 5-10 mm, recurved, pubescent or glabrous, thickened toward apex; bracteoles 2, caducous, ovate, ca. 2 mm. Sepals 5, persistent, broadly ovate to suborbicular, 3-5 mm, outside glabrous or white pubescent, inside white sericeous, margin ciliolate. Petals 6-8, white; outer 1-3 petals sepaloid; inner petals obovate to broadly obovate, 1.5-2 × 1.2-2 cm, basally connate, apex rounded. Stamens numerous, 0.8-1.3 cm, glabrous; outer filament whorl basally connate for ca. 2 mm. Ovary superior, globose, densely white pubescent, tomentose, or subglabrous, 3-loculed; style ca. 1 cm, glabrous or base pubescent, apically 3-lobed.

Fruit: Capsules oblate; 2-coccal; or rarely globose; 1-1.5 × 1.5-3 cm; 1- or 2-loculed with 1 seed per locule; pericarp ca. 1 mm thick. Seeds brown subglobose; 1-1.4 cm in diam.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: