Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Terrestrial shrubs.

Stems: Stems unbranched, fleshy, 0.2–0.5 m long, unarmed, muricate, or aculeate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades narrowly oblong to spatulate, 12–35 cm long, 3–6.5 cm wide. Apex subacute. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces purple, glabrous or sparsely pubescent on the veins. Margins callose–crenulate toward apex, entire toward base. Petiolate or sessile, petioles 0.5–0.8 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 3– 6–flowered, peduncles 10–25 mm long, pedicels 8–15 mm long; hypanthium cylindrical to obconical, 4–5 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes connate, forming an irregularly 2 lipped or 5-lobed sheath 7–10 mm long, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, glabrous or pubescent, rarely muricate, dark magenta, 6–8 cm long, the tube suberect to strongly arcuate, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading, rarely erect or all 5 downcurved in the same plane. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate, staminal column magenta, glabrous; anthers with apical tufts of white hairs on the lower 2 or rarely all 5, 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 dark purple; ellipsoid to obovoid; 15–18 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:

Elevation Range: ca. 600 m.