Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Presumably small trees.

Stems: Smooth, grayish bark and prominent petiole scars on young branches, glabrate to stellate puberulent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly oblong–ovate, 3–8.5 cm long. Base deeply cordate with a closed sinus. Upper surfaces sparsely pubescent; lower surfaces densely pubescent, especially in axils of major veins. Margins 3–angled or 5–angled or lobed, margins irregularly crenate. Petioles 1–5 cm long. Stipules obscure, subulate to triangular, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, borne near the ends of branches, 1(2) in the leaf axils, pedicels ca. 2 cm long in flower, up to 4 cm long in fruit; involucral bracts 6, connate slightly at base, linear–oblong to spatulate, 9–10 mm long, 1–5.3 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx tubular–campanulate, 5-lobed but often opening by 2-3 clefts, ca. 1.2 cm long, apparently deciduous, sepals connate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla usually zygomorphic, moderately curved, ca. 3.3 cm long, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, green, yellowish green, or magenta, densely stellate pubescent on lower surface and often on upper surface near apex, usually conspicuously veined. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, exserted or exposed apically by the spreading lower petals; antheriferous in upper ⅓–½ below the 5–dentate apex; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, placentation axile, 5-celled; ovules (2)3 per cell; style exceeding the staminal column; style branches 5, erect; stigmas terminal, capitate or discoid.

Fruit: Capsules woody capsules; slightly obovoid; apiculate; 2.5–3 cm long; 5-valved; loculicidally dehiscent; mesocarp strongly developed; reticulate; endocarp segments 10. Seeds reniform; ca. 6 mm long; yellowish lanate; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Probably mesic forest.

Elevation Range: