Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect to strongly ascending subshrubs 7–10 dm tall.

Stems: stem single or sometimes with few short side branches, conspicuously quadrangular, pale green, but distal internodes often purple-tinged, glabrous except internodes of inflorescence, bracts and sepals.

Roots:

Leaves: opposite blades 3–18 cm long, 1.2–4.5 cm wide, narrowly or broadly elliptic, sometimes lanceolate to oblanceolate apex acute to acuminate pale green to yellowish green, sometimes younger ones purple-tinged, slightly thickened and rubbery, chartaceous when dry, with only the midvein evident, the midvein ± slightly excentric the midvein ± slightly excentric petioles 0.5–1 cm long, weakly grooved.

Flowers: Inflorescence terminal, 40–50 cm long, with up to 80 or more flowers, diffuse, erect, the lateral branches 11–18 cm long, ascending, each with 6–20 flowers, the tertiary and higher level internodes, usually ascending or appressed, with pedicels usually spreading at anthesis, sometimes with a few minute curved hairs along the inflorescence internodes; bracts usually yellowish green, foliaceous, and nearly as large as the leaves in the lowest portions of the central axis, those in the upper part of the inflorescence and subtending the flowers, subulate, purple and usually yellowish green near base, margins ciliate; pedicels 4–6 mm long at anthesis, elongating slightly in fruit, conspicuously asymmetrically flattened and weakly quadrangular, sometimes with a few hairs toward the base. Sepals 3–4.1 mm long, lanceolate, purple, and sometimes greenish toward the base, concave to shallowly navicular toward the apex, oriented at ca. 30° to 60°angle to the pedicel, abaxial side smooth and rounded, glabrous, margins weakly scarious, ciliate, apex attenuate. Nectary shaft 1.5–2.1 mm long, gently recurved, apex weakly bifid. Stamens 10; filaments weakly dimorphic, the antisepalous whorl 2.5–3.1 mm long, the alternate whorl 1.5–2.6 mm long; anthers ca. 0.3 mm long, yellow, apparently dehiscing after flower opens. Styles 3, stigmas elongated and apparently receptive when flower opens, and anthers are dehiscing

Fruit: Capsules 4.3–5 mm long; ovoid Seeds 0.8–1.0 mm long; suborbicular; slightly asymmetrical; compressed; brown; the surface rugose.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: 1525 m