Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees 6–15 m tall.

Stems: Bark gray, rough, covered with lenticels, youngest branches yellowish brown tomentose.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to elliptic or oblong–ovate, 7.5–27 cm long, 3–14.5 cm wide; leaflets subopposite or alternate. Apex acute. Base rounded to truncate, usually inequilaterally decurrent. Surfaces glabrous, green with yellow midrib, simple, thick–chartaceous. Margins entire, usually somewhat undulate. Petioles 0.8–10 cm long, swollen at base. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary panicles 5–35 cm long. Flowers unisexual (and the plants monoecious), actinomorphic; pedicels 2–5 mm long, pubescent. Calyx of 5 sepals, broadly imbricate, unequal, outer ones ovate, ca. 1.8–2 mm long, inner ones suborbicular, 2–3 mm long, densely pubescent. Corolla of 5 petals, equal, narrowly ovate, ca. 3 mm long, pubescent on outer surface and margins, with a 2-lobed, pilose scale on inner surface at base. Stamens 8, staminal filaments 2.5–3 mm long, pubescent in the Iower ½, inserted on the thick margin of the 5-angled nectary disk; anthers ellipsoid, introrse, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, sterile in pistillate flowers. Ovary superior, ovoid, 2–3-celled, glabrous, rudimentary in staminate flowers, 3-lobed in pistillate flowers; ovules 1 per cell; style terminal; stigma 3-lobed, lobes rounded.

Fruit: Fruit of 1(2) fleshy; obovoid mericarps 2–3 cm long; pericarp leathery; glossy. Seeds 1 per mericarp; obovoid; 1.2–2 cm long; seed coat black; rugose; base truncate; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic to dry forest.

Elevation Range: 60–610 m.