Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Diffuse, sprawling or scandent subshrubs.

Stems: Stems terete (cylindrical), to 10–40 dm long, glabrous and often slightly glaucous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, widely spaced. Blades elliptic–obovate to oblong–ovate or broadly ovate, 6.5–16 cm long, 2–5.5 cm wide. Apex acuminate to caudate. Base rounded to subcordate. Lower surfaces glabrous or sometimes sparsely hirtellous along veins, blades coriaceous. Margins entire. Lateral veins impressed on upper surface, raised and conspicuous on lower surface, higher order reticulate venation slightly less raised but conspicuous.. Petioles slightly winged, 0.5–1 cm long, hirtellous at base on lower side. Stipules deltate, 3–8 mm long, adnate to inner side of petioles, apex with a mucro 1– 2 mm long, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers in broad, corymbiform, thyrsoid, paniculate inflorescences, with main axes becoming abortive after second or third node, main lateral branches of inflorescence similarly abortive, usually after first node, the strongly developed lateral branches thus forming a broad diffuse inflorescence, ultimate branches terminating in open to somewhat compact cymes, these hirtellous throughout or rarely glabrous, pedicels slender, 2–6 mm long, densely whitish hirtellous, sometimes sparsely so; hypanthium narrowly urceolate, ca. 1 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or functionally pistillate; insect-pollinated. Calyx 4-5-lobed, lobes linear or narrowly oblong–spatulate, ca. 1–1.5 mm long,0.3–0.5 mm wide, enlarging slightly in fruit, apex acute or obtuse. Corolla green to greenish yellow, the tube usually reddish purple, fleshy, salverform, the tube 6–9 mm long, often as short as 3–4 mm long in pistillate flowers, hirtellous, rarely sparsely so, the limb strongly quadrangular in bud, apex not depressed, the lobes 3–4 mm long, spreading or reflexed, apex without appendages; nectary disc present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted just below corolla lobe sinuses; anthers sessile or on short filaments, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior or partly so, 2(-4)-locular; ovules few to numerous on fleshy placentas near middle of septum; style as many as carpels, cylindrical to filiform, terminal, slender, hirtellous in lower 2/3, 2 lobed; stigma bilobed or subcapitate, included or exserted.

Fruit: Capsules subglobose; slightly compressed; strongly grooved and appearing somewhat didymous; 2.5–3 mm long; 2.8–4 mm in diameter; dehiscing loculicidally across disk; pyrenes separating septicidally; but remaining in the persistent vascular skeleton of the mesocarp; endocarp thinly sclerified; disk slightly raised; grooved;. Seeds dark brown; irregularly cuneiform; compressed; angled; lower angle slightly winged; minutely rugulose; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 750–1220 m.