Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 1.3–2.3 m tall.

Stems: Stems sparingly branched, smooth or sparsely muricate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong to obovate, blades 30–50 cm long, 10–15 cm wide (across the lobes). Apex acuminate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces sparsely pubescent or muricate along the midrib and veins. Margins irregularly lobed, the lobes 12–25 per side, deltate to triangular. Petioles 7–22 cm long, sparsely muricate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–12–flowered, axillary, peduncles 30–75 mm long, pedicels 18–35 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 8–12 mm long, 3–6 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes oblong, distinct or rarely connate, 10–24 mm long, 3–7 mm wide, apex obtuse, apiculate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomatic, greenish white or purplish, 60–70 mm long, 5–11 mm wide, pubescent at least on the lobes, the tube arcuate, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes spreading, ¼–1⁄2 as long as the tube. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers glabrous, all 5 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 yellow; globose. 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: Rare in mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: 550–900 m.