Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees or shrubs 2–4(–8) m tall.

Stems: Branches grayish, yellowish, or dark brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, 2.5–14.5 cm long, 0.9–6 cm wide. Apex rounded, obtuse, or acute, often with an abrupt, short, but wide point. Base cuneate or acuminate, occasionally attenuate, or rarely rounded. Lower surfaces sometimes puberulent; blades membranous, chartaceous, or coriaceous, occasionally with small domatia less than 0.5 mm long in vein axils. Margins entire. Lateral veins 6–14 pairs, tertiary veins often conspicuously reticulate, marginal ribs moderately, weakly, or not at all developed, usually glabrous. Subsessile or with slender petioles up to 2.5 cm long. Stipules broadly obovate, up to 8 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with 1 main axis and 2–3 nodes of verticillate branching, often pendent, at least in fruit, branches 0.3–5.5 mm long and often branched again, the ultimate branches terminated by a 3–flowered cymule, peduncles (0.2–)1.6–6.5(–15.5) cm long, all branches subtended by short bracts, these wider than long and caducous. Flowers insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual, 4–5(6)-merous, usually heterostylous. Calyx 4-6-lobed, 1.5–2 mm long at anthesis, the tube usually shorter than hypanthium, slightly expanded or occasionally flared toward apex, apex truncate or with very shallow lobes, glabrous or occasionally pubescent. Corolla white, 4-6-lobed, tube ca. 1.5 mm long at anthesis, the tube somewhat expanded toward apex, usually glabrous, throat sometimes pubescent, the lobes usually relatively thin, ovate to nearly subulate, 1–3 mm long, reflexed at anthesis; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments of staminate flowers ca. 1 mm long at anthesis, usually inserted on the corolla tube or throat; anthers attached at base, ovate–oblong, 0.8–1.2 mm long, exserted at anthesis in functionally staminate flowers, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits; (staminodes present in pistillate flowers). Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, turbinate, 1.5–2 mm long, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous; style 1 or as many as carpels, 1.5–3 mm long, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, divaricate, ca. 1 mm long, appressed and smaller in staminate flowers, usually pubescent, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; orange; pyriform or ellipsoid; 5–15 mm long; often with a narrow disk protruding prominently from within the remnant calyx; pyrenes 1-2(-4) hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; with a T-shaped invagination on the ventral surface; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic valleys; mesic forest; and wet forest.

Elevation Range: (15–)180–1,220 m.