Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Scrambling shrub.

Stems: Stems arching, prickly, center solid.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Subopposite. Blades ovate, elliptic, or oblong, 2.5-5 cm long. Apex rounded or obtuse. Base wedge-shaped. Surfaces +/- glabrous. Margins entire. Petioles base persisting as prickle. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence axillary from upper nodes, stalked, few-flowered, each flower +/- bracteolate. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes pointed, splitting longitudinally. Corolla nearly actinomorphic or slightly irregular, white, salverform or funnelform, tube 15 mm long, limb 12.5 mm diam., slightly to greatly exceeding the calyx, 5-lobed, the lobes subequal; nectary disk often present at base of ovary, annular or developed on anterior side only. Stamens 4(5), in 2 pairs, inserted on corolla tube and usually long–exserted, aligned with the sinuses; filament purple; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, occasionally 1 theca reduced or absent or the 2 thecae confluent, occasionally the connective elongate and thus separating the thecae. Ovary superior, rarely on a gynophore, 4-celled; ovules 1 per cell, attached laterally; style arising between lobes, placentation basal-axile; ovules 1 per ovary lobe, anatropous to hemitropous of apotropous; style 1, usually cleft; stigmas 2, sometimes 1 reduced and vestigial.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; globose or obovoid; weakly 4-lobed; separating at maturity into 2 halves at maturity; subtended or enclosed by the persistent calyx; exocarp ± fleshy; endocarp bony or crustaceous. Seeds oblong; with endosperm absent or scanty and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: