Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Terrestrial shrubs.

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

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades narrowly elliptic,18–22 cm long, 2.3–4 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Petioles ca. 2.8 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–6– flowered, peduncles 30–40 mm long, pedicels ca. 10 mm long; hypanthium cylindrical, ca. 8 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes distinct, oblong, ca. 1 cm long, obtuse, much shorter to somewhat longer than hypanthium, rarely up to as long as the corolla, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, purple, ca. 6.5 cm long, glabrous or pubescent, rarely muricate, 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, connate, staminal column pubescent; anthers pubescent, 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 unknown. 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: 2n = 28

Habitat:

Elevation Range: