Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small, soft–wooded, monoecious shrubs or trees 2–5(–6) m tall.

Stems: Usually few–branched with watery sap, young shoots tomentose with simple hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong, oblanceolate, or narrowly obovate to elliptic, rarely lanceolate, (4–)9–24(–27) cm long, (2–)4–7(–10) cm wide. Apex obtuse, acute, or acuminate. Base cuneate or sometimes attenuate. Upper surfaces sparsely appressed pilose to glabrous, becoming scabrous when dried; lower surfaces tomentose to moderately or sparsely appressed pilose, especially on the veins, sometimes glabrous; blade coriaceous. Margins serrate, the teeth callous-tipped. Petioles (1–)2–5(–7) cm long. Stipules minute, quickly deciduous.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or in clusters, the axis (2–)7–12 cm long; Staminate flowers in clusters of 2–4; pistillate flowers solitary. Flowers unisexual; Staminate flowers on pedicels 4–7 mm long pistillate on pedicels 3–10 mm long. Calyx of staminate flowers (2)3(4)-lobed, very broadly ovate to suborbicular, 5–7 mm long, usually densely appressed pilose, sometimes only sparsely so pistillate flower Calyx 3-lobed, the lobes triangular, 1.5–2 mm long, enlarging to 2–2.8 mm long in fruit, usually densely appressed pilose, sometimes only sparsely so. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flower numerous, 100–200 or more; pistillate flower stamen absent. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), pubescent toward apex or sometimes nearly throughout, becoming glabrate.

Fruit: Capsules depressed–globose; ca. 5 mm long; 6–6.5 mm in diameter; deeply 3– grooved. Seeds globose; rugose.

Ploidy: 2n = 44*

Habitat: Mesic to sometimes dry forest.

Elevation Range: (350–)550–650(–1,525) m.