Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Terrestrial shrubs.

Stems: Stems woody, unbranched, 1–2 m long, unarmed, muricate, or aculeate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades obovate to broadly elliptic,18–45 cm long, 7–16 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces pubescent. Margins callose–crenulate, apex acute to acuminate. Petioles 3–4 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–12– flowered, pendent, pubescent, peduncles 80–250 mm long, pedicels 10–15 mm long; hypanthium oblong to obconical, 8–12 mm long, pubescent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes oblong, 4–10 mm long, pubescent, distinct or rarely connate,, apex truncate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dark magenta or rarely white, 6-7.5 cm long, pubescent, 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, staminal column glabrous, connate; anthers palde magenta, glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hair, 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 pale orangish yellow; ellipsoid to obovoid; 10–14 mm long. Seeds numerous; small; pale brown to black; smooth; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 28

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest.

Elevation Range: 300–915 m.