Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs up to 3 m tall, armed with prominent reddish prickles 3–5 mm long, laterally flattened at base, usually absent from the inflorescence, sometimes pubescent with yellowish stellate hairs, with intraxylary phloem.

Stems: Prickles scattered to abundant on stems.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate–elliptic to elliptic in outline, 10–15 cm long, 6–8 cm wide, but often somewhat smaller. Apex acute to acuminate. Base rounded, oblique. Prickles usually on the leaves at least on lower surface, dense on young parts and lower surfaces (veins prominent), becoming glabrate, sparser on upper leaf surfaces with age. Margins deeply (⅓ to midrib) or shallowly lobed (more so in juvenile phases?) with 1–4 distinct to obscure lobes per side. Veins prominent on lower surface. Petioles 4–7 cm long, sometimes armed. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers numerous in compound, subpaniculate, racemose cymes with up to 5 orders of branching, leaf–opposed, pedicels 8–10 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx 3–4 mm long, deeply lobed, sometimes somewhat 2–lipped. Corolla white, broadly stellate, ca. 2 cm in diameter, the lobes ovate, densely pubescent externally, glabrous within. Stamens (4)5; filaments short, inserted low on corolla tube; anthers arcuate, elliptic–oblong, ca. 2 mm long, opening by terminal pores. Ovary superior, globose, ca. 1 mm long, pubescent toward apex, 2(3–4)-carpellate, placentation axile; ovules numerous; style 1, erect, ca. 4 mm long; stigma shortly 2-lobed.

Fruit: Berries possibly maturing through yellowish orange to black; 1.3–1.8 cm in diameter or perhaps more. Seeds compressed; embryo curved; submarginal; endosperm present.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Dry to mesic forest; diverse mesic forest; and subalpine forest.

Elevation Range: 600–2,020 m.