Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees up to 5 m tall.

Stems: Branches yellowish to dark brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades oblanceolate to obovate, (8.5–)15–29.2 cm long, 4–10.1 cm wide. Apex rounded or obtuse and usually with a thick, stout point. Base attenuate to obtuse or subcordate. Surfaces usually glabrous, blades coriaceous, domatia absent or extremely small and\ inconspicuous. Margins revolute. Lateral veins 12–15 pairs. Petioles 0–2 cm long. Stipules ovate–deltate, up to 10 mm long, often with the tip extended into a point.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with 1 main axis and 1–2 nodes of verticillate branching, branches 8–20 mm long and again verticillately branched, terminated by a 3–flowered cymule, peduncles 1.8–10 cm long, central flower of each cymule usually sessile, lateral 2 flowers on short pedicels. Flowers insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual, 5-merous. Calyx 4-6-lobed, glabrous or pubescent, 0.5–1.5 mm long at anthesis, the tube usually shorter than hypanthium, slightly expanded at apex, truncate or very slightly lobed, acute or obtuse. Corolla white, 4-6-lobed, rotate, the tube less than 2 mm long, slightly expanded toward apex, throat glabrous, the lobes ovate, up to 3 mm long, reflexed at anthesis; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens at many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments usually inserted on the corolla tube or throat, 1–1.5 mm long at anthesis; anthers attached at base, exserted at anthesis in functionally staminate flowers, narrowly oblong, 0.5–1 mm long, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits; (staminodes present in pistillate flowers). Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, up to 1 mm long, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous; style 1 or as many as carpels, about as long as ovary, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, lobed or capitate, divaricate, 0.2–0.5 mm long, divergent in functionally pistillate flowers, (smaller and appressed in functionally staminate flowers), dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; orange; pyriform; 7–15 mm long; apex with the short; persistent calyx less than 1 mm long and usually very narrow; pyrenes 1-2(-4); hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; with a large T-shaped invagination on the ventral side; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 120–850 m.