Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 1.5–2.5 m tall.

Stems: Stems few–branched, rounded to angular, pubescent with multicellular hairs or glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, borne on upper 2–4 nodes. Those leaves of a pair unequal, slightly asymmetrical, ovate to ovate–elliptic, ca. 15–20 cm long, 3–9 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base constricted to a long-attenuate base. Upper surfaces sparsely covered with white, hemispherical, subsessile glands, more densely so when young; lower surfaces moderately puberulent, blades chartaceous. Margins serrate. Petioles 1.5–8 cm long, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, arising in the leaf axils, sparsely covered with subsessile glands and also with a few scattered hairs, peduncles 9–20 mm long, pedicels 14–20 mm long, elongating to 20–27 mm long in fruit, bracts foliaceous, lanceolate, 10–18 mm long, distinct or occasionally connate, deciduous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–5(6)-lobed, nearly actinomorphic, green(?) when fresh, 12–14 mm long, enlarging up to ca. 21 mm long after anthesis, cleft nearly to base, the lobes foliaceous, elliptic–ovate, sparsely covered with subsessile glands, becoming glabrate, deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, tube subcylindrical, nearly straight, ca. 17 mm long, ca. 5 mm in diameter medially, flaring at mouth, sparsely covered with subsessile glands, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, the lobes imbricate in bud, upper lobes suborbicular-cordate, ca. 3.5–4.5 mm long, 4.5–6.5 mm wide, lower lobes suborbicular, ca. 7 mm long, ca. 7–8 mm wide. Stamens 5, inserted about halfway up corolla tube, the 2 upper Stamens fertile, others staminodial, +/– with abortive anthers; fertile anthers coherent positioned in throat of corolla tube, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by apical pores. Ovary superior, oblong–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, placentas 2, ± intruded, rarely joined in center and dividing ovary into 2 cells; ovules numerous, anatropous, glabrous, apex rounded or with a stylar beak; style 4–6 mm long, covered with subsessile glands; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Fruit a fleshy or firm berry; white; ovoid; ca. 1.5–1.9 cm long; often tipped by the persistent stylar beak. Seeds numerous; ellipsoid; minute; 0.4–0.5 mm long; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: In mesic forest.

Elevation Range: ca. 460 m.