Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees up to 5 m tall.

Stems: Smooth, grayish bark and prominent petiole scars on young branches, glabrate to stellate puberulent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly ovate to transversely ovate in outline, 7–11 cm long, sometimes 3–angled. Surfaces sparsely stellate pubescent, tufted in the principal vein axils on lower surface. Margins subentire to broadly undulate–crenate. Petioles 5–7 cm long. Stipules ca. 7.2 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, borne near the ends of branches, pedicels 1–3 cm 1ong; involucral bracts 5–6, connate only at base, linear to ligulate or subspatulate, 11–18 mm long, 1.1–2 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx tubular saccate, 2.3–2.5 cm long, 5-lobed or irregularly cleft, sepals connate, the lobes valvate in bud, persistent in fruit or circumscissilly dehiscent toward base before capsule maturity. Corolla usually zygomorphic, tubular to rotate or reflexed, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, apparently yellowish green, 3.5–5 cm long, curved and narrowly convolute with the 2 lower petals shorter and usually spreading or reflexed apically, densely stellate pubescent on lower surface and often on upper surface near apex, usually conspicuously veined. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, exserted or exposed apically by the spreading lower petals; antheriferous in upper ⅓–½ below the 5–dentate apex; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, placentation axile, 5-celled; ovules (2)3 per cell; style exceeding the staminal column; style branches 5, erect; stigmas terminal, capitate or discoid.

Fruit: Capsules woody; broadly ellipsoid; invaginate apically; ca. 3.5 cm long; mesocarp strongly developed; reticulate; endocarp segments 10. Seeds not known.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Dry forest; lava fields.

Elevation Range: ca. 800 m.