Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect to strongly ascending subshrubs 5–15 dm tall.

Stems: Stems often swollen at the nodes, terete (cylindrical), 4–angled or –ridged, many-branched, glabrous throughout, except bracts and sepals, internodes lightly purple–tinged.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades narrowly ovate or lanceolate to narrowly or broadly elliptic, 6.5–13 cm long, 1.5–2.8 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Base leaf bases often connate around the stem, base gradually attenuate. Surfaces dull green, sometimes purple–tinged, slightly thickened and rubbery, chartaceous when dry, with only the midvein evident. Margins entire, slightly thickened becoming revolute toward the base. Midvein ± slightly excentric. Petioles 0.5–1.1 cm long, weakly± grooved. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence terminal, with 10–18 flowers, 17–26 cm long, diffuse, erect, the tertiary and higher-level internodes usually ascending or appressed, and pedicels appressed at anthesis, sometimes with a few hairs toward the base of the internodes; bracts subulate, the lowermost of central axis elliptic, green and purple–tinged or purple, margins ciliate, the lower ones 10–45 mm long, those of branches and flowers 3–8 mm long; pedicels 3–11 mm long at anthesis, elongating to 10–15 mm long in fruit, conspicuously asymmetrically flattened and weakly quadrangular, sometimes with a few hairs toward the base on the angles. Flowers bisexual (perfect), cleistogamous. Sepals 4.0–4.5 mm long, narrowly lanceolate, green, sometimes purple–tinged or nearly purple throughout, opaque, abaxial side glabrous, margins scarious, weakly ciliate, apex attenuate, often slightly twisted. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 10; filaments dimorphic, the antisepalous whorl 4.0–4.1 mm long, the alternate whorl ca. 3.5 mm long; anthers ca. 0.3–0.4 mm long, subequal, pale yellow. Ovary superior, 1-celled; ovule placentation free-central; styles 3–4.

Fruit: Capsules ca. 4.0––4.5 mm long; narrowly ovoid. Seeds ca. 1 mm long; orbicular–reniform; compressed; the surface rugose; perisperm starchy; hard or rarely soft; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: In wet montane forest.

Elevation Range: 1100–1146 m.