Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 1.3–2 m tall, with white, yellow, or tan latex.

Stems: Stems unbranched or sparingly branched from base, sparsely muricate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades pinnately divided, cut ¾–7/8 the distance to the midrib, blades 22–42 cm long, 8–25 cm wide (across the segments), the segments 10–15 per side, lanceolate to elliptic, 10–25 mm wide, the lobes obtuse. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces sparsely pubescent and muricate on midrib and veins. Margins irregularly lobed. Petioles 4.5–10 cm long, muricate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 8–15–flowered in axillary racemes, the rachis sometimes not expanded, the raceme thus appearing subumbellate; peduncles 20–50 mm long; pedicels 8–12 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 4–6 mm long, 3–4 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes narrowly oblong, 2–5 mm long, 1–2 mm wide, distinct or rarely connate, apex acute to acuminate; tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, 30–38 mm long, 3–5 mm wide, sparsely pubescent, the tube suberect to gently curved, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading, ⅓–1⁄2 as long as the tube, sparsely muricate. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous, 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 unknown. Seeds unknown.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Formerly occurring in mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: