Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 1.6–2.6 m tall, with white, yellow, or tan latex.

Stems: Stems sparingly branched, unarmed, muricate, or aculeate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblanceolate to narrowly obovate, blades 15–30 cm long, 5.5–9 cm wide. Apex acute to obtuse and mucronate. Base cuneate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces sparsely pubescent. Margins callose-denticulate. Petioles 2–4 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 6–12–flowered, in axillary racemes, the rachis sometimes not expanded, the raceme thus appearing subumbellate, pendent, peduncles 150–300 mm long, pedicels 16–20 mm long, upcurved; hypanthium depressed–obovoid, 4–6 mm long, 6–8 mm wide, glabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes triangular to deltate, 1–2.5 mm long, distinct or rarely connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, pale lilac, 48–55 mm long, 3–5 mm wide, strongly arcuate, glabrous, the tube suberect to strongly arcuate, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading, rarely erect or all 5 downcurved in the same plane. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries depressed-obovoid; 6–8 mm long; 12–14 mm wide. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: 915–1220 m.