Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1.5–6.5 m tall, terrestrial or epiphytic.

Stems: Stems branched repeatedly, spreading, light gray or light brown, glabrous or rarely pubescent, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars near apex, pith solid, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong, elliptic, or oblanceolate, 7–25 cm long, 2–5 cm wide. Apex acuminate, acute, obtuse, or cuspidate. Base cuneate or attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or pubescent along the veins; lamina chartaceous, dull; upper surfaces green; lower surfaces light green. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 1–7 cm long, glabrous or pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2(–4)–flowered or sometimes 1–flowered by abortion, glabrous or pubescent; peduncle 1.8–5 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at apex; pedicels 1.5–4 cm long, spreading, bibracteolate at or below middle. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1–1.5 cm long, 1–1.5 cm in diameter, hemispheric or obconic, glabrous or pubescent. Calyx synsepalous; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a hypanthium, hemispheric, obconic, obovoid, turbinate or rarely oblong, smooth with or with 10 longitudinal furrows, rarely muricate or with 10 longitudinal ridges, lobes 5, valvate, 0.3–3.6 cm long, 0.5–10 mm wide, narrowly triangular or triangular, distinct or connate at base; deciduous, mimicking the corolla in shape, texture, and color; apex acute or acuminate. Corolla 4–6 cm long, bilabiate, green, purple, or white, glabrous or pubescent; tube 2–2.7 cm long, 0.6–1.2 cm in diameter, suberect or curved; lobes 2–3.6 cm long, 2–4 mm wide, spreading. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, exserted, suberect or gently curved; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, white or light purple, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, otherwise glabrous, the tube 1.4–1.8 cm long, 3–5 mm in diameter; filaments connate above, free from the corolla; filaments 3.7–4.8 cm long, white or light purple, glabrous. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-carpellate, 2-loculed; ovule placentation axile, placentae large; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries 2–3.6 cm long; 2–3.6 cm in diameter; orange or yellow; subglobose; pericarp thick; leathery; placentae juicy or spongy; apex truncate; crowned with a low circular rim and base of style. Seeds numerous; tiny; dark brown or black; minutely foveate–reticulate; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 14*.

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 670–1,825 m.