Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub, 1.5–3.0 m tall.

Stems: Stems usually branched, erect or ascending, 5–11 mm in diameter, light gray or brown, unarmed, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, moderately leafy toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, leaves scattered along distal portion of stem. Blades ovate or narrowly ovate, 13.5–30.0 cm long, 4.8–11.5 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base truncate, rounded, or obtuse. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins finely serrate, serrulate, crenate, or dentate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 6–18 cm long, ⅓–⅔ as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–32–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 4–32 mm long; rachis 10–76 mm long; bracts 0.5–1.2 mm long, pubescent, triangular or deltate (rarely becoming larger, foliaceous, oblanceolate), persistent, each subtending a pedicel; pedicels 6–13 mm long, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 5.0–6.5 mm long, 3–5 mm in diameter, ca. 1/8 as long as corolla, obovoid or ellipsoid. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx synsepalous, actinomorphic; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a glabrous hypanthium 1/10–⅓ as long as the corolla; lobes 5, 0.3–1.0 mm long, 0.3–0.8 mm wide, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium, glabrous or pubescent. Corolla sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, glabrous, 45–60 mm long, white; tube strongly curved or arcuate, laterally compressed, 24–37 mm long, 1.4–2.5 mm tall at base, 4.0–8.5 mm tall above middle, dorsally cleft to about the middle, with a small knob at the terminus of the cleft (sometimes with a lateral pair as well); lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, acute or acuminate at apex, somewhat dimorphic, dorsal lobes 11–23 mm long, 1.8–2.7 mm wide, ¼ as long to almost as long as tube, ventral lobes 9–20 mm long, 1–2.3 mm wide, usually connate for ¼–1⁄2 their length. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filament tube 45–52 mm long; filaments connate, free from the corolla, inserted on the rim of the hypanthium; anther tube 2.0–3.2 mm in diameter, glabrous (rarely sparsely pubescent at base); anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube, dorsal anthers occluding the orifice of the tube, 6–7 mm long, 1/8–⅐ as long as filament tube, with a triangular scale of concrescent hairs 0.4–0.8 mm long at apex; ventral anthers 4–5 mm long, with tufts of hairs 1.5–3.2 mm long at apex. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-loculed, crowned by an annular nectary; placentae axile; ovules many; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near the apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries ca. 8 mm long; ca. 6.5 mm in diameter; broadly ellipsoid. Seeds 1.5 mm long; 0.9 mm wide (Fig. 1A; Buss et al. 2001; fig. 33).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 120–460 m.