Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees up to 15(–25) m tall.

Stems: Young stems, petioles, and pedicels hispid with spreading, brownish yellow, few–armed, stellate hairs up to 10 mm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades cordate–orbicular, 20–60 cm long, smaller and narrower distally. Apex acute to acuminate. Surfaces loosely pubescent. Margins subentire. Veins on lower surface usually with an elongate gland basally. Petioles often as long as blades, hispid with spreading brownish yellow, few-armed, stallate hairs up to 10 mm long. Stipules foliaceous, 50–100(–150) mm long, enclosing the buds, early deciduous leaving an annular scar.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or few in open cymes; involucral bracts 8–14, distinct nearly to base, linear to linear–oblong, up to 25 mm long, yellow hirsute, about equalling the calyx; pedicels hispid with spreading, brownish yellow, few-armed, stellate hairs upt to 10 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx campanulate, 2.5–3 cm long, lobed to about the middle; 5-lobed or 5-parted, often accrescent in fruit, veins obscure or prominent, sometimes with a gland on midrib of each lobe, lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, petals flaring, yellow with a purplish red basal spot, fading yellowish orange, drying greenish yellow, 6–7 cm long, rotate to campanulate or tubular, lower surface usually densely pubescent, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, 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 included; antheriferous from near base; filaments terminating the staminal column or borne below a 5-dentate apex; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, 5-celled or rarely appearing 10-celled by a vertical partition, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 3 or more per cell; style exceeding the staminal column, 5-branched, each branch terminated by an expanded stigma.

Fruit: Loculicidally dehiscent capsules; elipsoid to obovoid; beaked; 2-3.5 cm long; yellow hirsute; the valves eventually separating. Seeds reniform; ca. 4 mm long; bordered with villous hairs; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Sparingly naturalized in mesic sites.

Elevation Range: