Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees 2–4 m tall, all parts densely pubescent with sessile to long–stalked stellate hairs, loose and floccose on young growth, with intraxylary phloem.

Stems: Branched above to form a rounded canopy, unarmed, densely pubescent.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades elliptic, up to 30 cm long and 12 cm wide on young vigorous growth, usually ca. 18 cm long and ca. 7 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base cuneate, often oblique. Surfaces densely pubescent with sessile to long–stalked stellate hairs, loose and floccose on young growth, paler on lower surface, simple. Margins entire (mature stems). Petioles 3–9 cm long, each with 1–2 smaller auriculate leaves in axils, these sessile, rounded, sometime absent from weak or distal shoots. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers numerous in branched corymbs, peduncles up to 15 cm long to first fork, pedicels 2–3 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx tube short, 2–3 mm long, the lobes narrowly triangular, 2–3 mm long. Corolla lilac blue with a pale star–shaped area at base, stellate, 1.5–2.5 cm in diameter. Stamens 5, inserted low on corolla tube; filaments ca. 1 mm long; anthers oblong, 2–3.5 mm long, opening by terminal pores.

Fruit: Berries dull yellowish; succulent; globose; 1–1.5 cm in diameter; pubescent at least in early stages. Seeds numerous; flattened; 1.5–2 mm long; seed coat minutely reticulate; embryo curved; submarginal; endosperm present.

Ploidy: 2n = 24

Habitat: Slopes and ridges in disturbed wet forest.

Elevation Range: 200–450 m.