Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, suffrutescent herbs or subshrubs.

Stems: Branches tetragonal, 1–2 m long, few branched.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, decussate. Blades elliptic to ovate, 3–7(–9.5) cm long, 1.4–4 cm wide. Apex acute to rarely obtuse or rounded. Base of larger leaves acute to long-attenuate and decurrent on the petiole. Surfaces ± appressed–pubescent. Margins cilliate and red. Pinnately veined. Petioles 4–15(–21) mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers bisexual (perfect). Hypanthium 3–4 mm long in flower, sparsely covered, with appressed or antrorsely spreading, barbellate hairs; fruiting hypanthium campanulate, 5–6 mm long, 4–6 mm wide, smooth to vaguely reticulate. Calyx lobes triangular, persistent, lobes 4–6 mm long in fruit, 2–3 mm wide at base, glabrous but tipped with a solitary hair. Corolla of 4 petals, white, pink, or magenta, 6.5–8 mm long, 5.5–7 mm wide. Stamens 8, markedly dimorphic; anthers with a solitary apical pore, connective of larger anthers prolonged ventrally at base of anthers and modified into a deeply bifid horizontal appendage at the filament insertion, connective of smaller anthers barely modified into a minute, bluntly 2-lobed appendage; anthers of larger Stamens usually 3.5–4.5 mm long, connective prolonged 2.5–3 mm with an appendage 1.5–3 mm long; anthers of smaller Stamens 2.5–3.5 mm long, connective prolonged ca. 0.25 mm. Ovary inferior, distinct, 4-celled, crowned by 4 scales; ovules numerous, placentation axile; style simple; stigma terminal.

Fruit: Capsules enclosed by the hypanthium. Seeds ca. 0.5 mm long; cochleate; surface tuberculate; endosperm absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 36

Habitat: Mesic to wet sites along roadsides and in other disturbed sites.

Elevation Range: