Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small trees or shrubs up to 5 m tall.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades obovate or occasionally elliptic, 4–14.1 cm long, 1.6–6.3 cm wide. Apex obtuse to rounded. Base acute to obtuse. Lower surfaces glabrous to sparsely pubescent, particularly along midrib, usually tinged red, coriaceous, domatia small or absent. Margins revolute. Lateral veins 6–12 pairs, tertiary veins conspicuous on lower surface. Petioles 0.1–2 cm long. Stipules ovate–deltate to obovate, 5–8 mm long, apex usually obtuse or rounded, with a thick band of brown hairs in the axil, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with 1 main axis and usually verticillate branching, each branch subtended by a bract that completely encircles the nodes, branches of the lower node usually terminated by a 3–flowered cymule, those of the upper node, when present, often with only 1 flower, peduncles (0.5–)5–9.5 cm long, usually pubescent, pedicels 0.1–0.6 cm long, bracts usually on secondary inflorescence branches, ovate, less than 1 mm long, brown villous within. Flowers insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual, usually 5-merous, often heterostylous. Calyx 1–2 mm long, slightly dilated toward apex and truncate. Corolla white, the tube 10–22 mm long, slightly dilated toward apex, throat glabrous, the lobes ovate–deltate, 4–6 mm long, reflexed; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, exserted at anthesis; filaments usually inserted on the corolla tube or throate, 3–4.5 mm long; anthers exserted at anthesis in funtionally staminate flowers, attached ¼–⅓ from base, 3.5–4.5 mm long, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 3–4 mm long at anthesis, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous; style as many as carpels, 20–28 mm long, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, small, lobed or capitate, divergent in functionally pistillate flowers, appressed in functionally staminate flowers, pubescent, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; orange; usually pyriform; 10–15 mm long at maturity; capped by the persistent calyx tube 1–2 mm long; pyrenes 1-2(-4); triangular in cross section; usually without invagination of the seed coat on the ventral surface; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; usually without invagination on the ventral surface; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to sometimes wet forest.

Elevation Range: 1,040–1,230 m.