Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Compact, many-branched shrubs 10–20(–30) dm tall.

Stems: Stems gray to reddish or dark gray, branches covered with persistent stipules, densely leafy only toward apex.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to elliptic or occasionally obovate, (3.2–)4.5–7(–9.9) cm long, 1.5–3(–3.8) cm wide. Apex acute to rounded. Upper surfaces green and glabrous to moderately silky strigose, rarely densely silky strigose; lower surfaces densely grayish green to gray silky strigose. Margins serrate at least ⅓ from apex, sometimes nearly to base, with 7–15 teeth on each side. Usually 7–11-veined. Petioles (1–)1.5–2.5(–3) cm long. Stipules subulate, 7–10 mm long, strigillose.

Flowers: Flowers usually 25–50 in compound cymes, forming large corymbose inflorescences that project beyond the leaves; peduncles and pedicels slender. Peduncles usually 1.5–3 cm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic; pedicels 0.3–0.8 cm long, elongating up to 1 cm long in fruit; pedicels subtended by narrow bracts. Calyx of 5 sepals, often purple–tinged, narrowly elliptic to oblong–oblanceolate, 6–9 mm long, densely silky strigose, apex with an awn 0.1–1 mm long, distinct or sometimes connate at base, rarely forming a tube. Petals white, usually with purple veins and purple at base, or pink to dark purple, narrowly obovate, 10–15 mm long. Stamens (5)10; filaments usually 6–8 mm long, ± connate at base, those alternate with the petals longer than others and with basal glands; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or nearly so, 5-celled, carpels connate around a central column to form a compound ovary with as many cells, fertile portion a lobed ring at base of stylar column, placentation axile; ovules 2 per cell, anatropous to campylotropous, usually pendulous; styles 3–5, 5–6 mm long at anthesis, elongating to 14–20 mm long in fruit, beakless, branches filiform, reflexed, sometimes narrowed below apex; stigmas slender and dry, rarely capitate.

Fruit: Septicidal and elastically dehiscent capsules separating into as many segments as carpels; a portion of the style splitting off from remainder of stylar column and forming an awn that recurves upward from the persistent central column; usually remaining attached to apex; sometimes the awn also becomes spirally coiled; awn usually hygroscopic; carpel bodies 2.5–3 mm long; sparsely pubescent. Seeds 1–2 per segment; dark reddish brown; oblong–obovoid; ca. 2 mm long; the surface inconspicuously reticulate and shiny; endosperm usually scanty or absent; rarely copious and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Rare to scattered in montane grassland to wet forest; occasionally in subalpine shrubland.

Elevation Range: 1,580–2,450 m.