Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unbranched shrubs.

Stems: Stems woody, 1–3 m long, muricate in juveniles, becoming merely scabrous or nearly smooth with age.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades elliptic or oblanceolate, 15–60 cm long, 5.5–14 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Upper surfaces glabrous, muricate in juveniles; lower surfaces pubescent with simple hairs, or rarely glabrous. Margins callose–crenulate, coarsely callose–dentate in juveniles. Petioles 1–9 cm long, pubescent or muricate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 4–16–flowered, axillary, peduncles 20–100 mm long, pedicels 5–30 mm long; hypanthium obovoid, obconical, or ellipsoid, glabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes triangular, 1–3 mm long, glabrous, apex acute to obtuse. Corolla pale to dark magenta, rarely pale greenish, often with lighter or darker longitudinal stripes, 5–8 cm long, glabrous, the tube suberect to strongly arcuate, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous or pubescent; anthers pubescent, all 5 or only the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries obovoid to obpyriform; 16–20 mm long. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 28*

Habitat: Occurring in mesic valleys and wet forest.

Elevation Range: 300–915 m.