Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small shrubs ca. 1–2 m tall.

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

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, borne on upper 2–5 nodes. Those leaves of a pair unequal, symmetrical or nearly so, elliptic, 5–16 cm long, 1.5–5.5 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base cuneate to attenuate. Upper surfaces moderately hirsute; lower surfaces moderately to sparsely velvety pilose, blades chartaceous. Margins remotely and irregularly dentate. Petioles 1.3–5 cm long, shaggy hirsute, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 1–2 in cymes arising in the leaf axils, densely brownish villous throughout, peduncles 3–35 mm long, pedicels 3–22 mm long, bracts lanceolate, distinct or occasionally connate, 5–11 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–5(6)-lobed, nearly actinomorphic, greenish white when fresh, 11–15 mm long, enlarging up to 20 mm long in fruit, cleft to base, the lobes linear to oblong–lanceolate, both surfaces densely brownish villous, except the lower 3–4 mm on inner face glabrate, deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, tube cylindrical, straight or curved 14–18 mm long, ca. 3–4 mm in diameter, densely villous, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, the lobes imbricate in bud, upper lobes reniform–orbicular, ca. 2–3.5 mm long, ca. 4 mm wide, lower lobes very broadly elliptic–ovate, 3.5–5 mm long, 4.5–5 mm wide. 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, glabrous, apex rounded or with a stylar beak; style ca. 3 mm long, glabrous to pilose ; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Fruit a fleshy or firm berry; white; ellipsoid; 1.2–1.8 cm long; pilose above the middle; often tipped by the persistent stylar beak. Seeds numerous; ellipsoid; 0.35–0.45 mm long; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Formerly occurring in wet gulch–bottoms in mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: 520–610 m.