Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: 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 3–4 nodes. Those leaves of a pair unequal, symmetrical, elliptic, 12–27 cm long, (4–)5–8.5 cm wide. Apex acuminate to long-acuminate. Base cuneate. Upper surfaces sparsely hirtellous; lower surfaces sparsely to moderately velvety short–pilose, blades chartaceous. Margins serrate. Petioles 3.5–7.5 cm long, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 1–2 in cymes arising in the leaf axils, moderately appressed brown pilose throughout, peduncles 15–25 mm long, pedicels unequal, 10–20 mm long, elongating to ca. 20–30 mm long in fruit, bracts linear-lanceolate, distinct or occasionally connate, 11–25 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–5(6)-lobed, nearly actinomorphic, green, 11–20 mm long, cleft nearly to base, the lobes linear, moderately brown short–pilose, glabrous within except short–pilose in upper ⅓, occasionally with a few scattered hairs on the lower ⅔, deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, tube subcylindrical, straight or curved, 10–12 mm long, ca. 3–4 mm in diameter medially, pilose or glabrous, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, the lobes imbricate in bud, upper lobes broadly ovate, ca. 3–4 mm long, ca. 4–5 mm wide, lower lobes very broadly elliptic, ca. 6 mm long, ca. 7 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; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Berries fleshy or firm; white; ovoid; ca. 1 cm long (immature?); often tipped by the persistent stylar beak. Seeds numerous; ellipsoid; minute; usually less than ca. 1 mm long; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Wet forests.

Elevation Range: 770–1,200 m.