Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs up to 3(–4) m tall, glabrate or sparsely pubescent.

Stems: Stems with lines of simple and bifurcate hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades lanceolate to ovate, 4–10(–15) cm long. Apex acuminate. Base obtuse. Margins crenate–serrate. Petioles with lines of simple and bifurcate hairs. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or in terminal, cymose clusters, pedicellate, pendulous; involucral bracts (6-)8-9(-17), linear to ovate or spatulate, connate at base. Involucral bracts 6–8, spatulate, 12–18 mm long, 2–3 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Pedicels densely pubescent, to 1.5–4 cm long. Calyx composed of connate sepals, (3-)5-lobed, 14–20 mm long, the lobes ciliate. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, red or sometimes white, 5.5–6.5 cm long funnelform, corolla of 5 petals, obovate, each petal with a prominent basal auricle distinct from each other but adnate at base to staminal column, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, staminal column slightly exserted, shortly antheriferous below the 5-lobed apex; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, carpels 5, placentation axile; ovules 1 per carpel, ascending; style exceeding the staminal column, slightly exserted, branches 10; stigmas capitate.

Fruit: Fruit apparently unknown. Seeds reniform; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 28; 86

Habitat: Cultivated and sparingly naturalized in disturbed mesic sites.

Elevation Range: 0–330 m.