Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Gray–barked trees 6–10 m tall.

Stems: Branches, petioles, and pedicels copiously closely stellate pubescent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades orbicular to broadly ovate–elliptic, 5–18(–25) cm long, 3–13(–18) cm wide. Apex obtuse to acute. Base obtuse to truncate. Lower surfaces grayish velvety tomentose; upper surfaces less densely pubescent or glabrous. Margins inconspicuously to moderately crenate or crenate–serrate. Petioles usually less than ½ as long as blades. Stipules filiform, 5–8 mm long, early deciduous.

Flowers: Flowers strongly fragrant, solitary, born near the ends of branches; pedicels 2–3 cm long, articulate, copiously closely stellate pubescent; involucral bracts 7–8, linear-lanceolate, 8–10 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx tubular, 2–2.5 cm long, composed of connate sepals; 5-lobed, often accrescent in fruit, lobes 8–15 mm long, tube usually splitting longitudinally in fruit, veins obscure or prominent, sometimes with a gland on midrib of each lobe, lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, corolla of 5 petals, flaring, adnate basally to the staminal column to form a tube 1.5-cm long, opening white in the morning, fading to pinkish in the afternoon, usually broadly obovate, 4-6 cm long, lower surface usually densely pubescent, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column; staminal column exserted, reddish to crimson apically, up to 15 cm long; filaments arising in upper ½ of staminal column, spreading, up to 2.5 cm long; 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; cartilaginous; obovoid; apiculate; to 1.8–2.5 cm long; glabrous; exocarp and endocarp sometimes separating at maturity. Seeds angular–reniform; ca. 4 mm long; brownish tomentose; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 84*

Habitat: Diverse mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 250–1200 m.