Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Slender trees up to 5 m tall.

Stems: Branches chestnut to grayish brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades obovate, oblanceolate–oblong, or elliptic–oblong, 2.2–14 cm long, 1.1–7 cm wide. Apex acute to obtuse or sometimes rounded. Base attenuate to narrowly or broadly cuneate. Surfaces glabrous or occasionally hirtellous, particularly in axils of veins, blades thick or thin, coriaceous, domatia absent or small, often with whitish or brownish hairs within them. Margins entire. Lateral veins 6–11 pairs, tertiary veins often conspicuously reticulate. Petioles 0.2–2.5 cm long. Stipules up to 8 mm long, often with elongated apices.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with 1 main axis and 1–2 nodes of verticillate branching, branches usually less than 5 mm long and usually terminated by a 3–flowered cymule, the central and oldest flower of each sessile on the branches and the 2 lateral ones on short pedicels, branches subtended by small, caducous bracts. Flowers insect-pollinated, usually functionally unisexual, 4–5-merous, often heterostylous. Calyx 4-6 lobed,1–2 mm long, often flared toward apex, apex truncate or with minute rounded lobes, the tube usually shorter than hypanthium. Corolla white, tube up to 3 mm long, slightly expanded toward apex, throat glabrous, the lobes 4-6, ovate or lanceolate, 4–6.5 mm long, strongly reflexed; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments of staminate flowers up to 2.5 mm long at anthesis, usually inserted on the corolla tube or throat; anthers attached at base, oblong, 1.5–2 mm long, exserted at anthesis in functionally staminate flowers, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–4 mm long, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous; styles as many as carpels, 5–6 mm long, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, lobed or capitate, 1–2 mm long, puberulent or papillose, divergent in functionally pistillate flowers, appressed in functionally staminate flowers, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; orange; globose–pyriform; 10–13 mm long; often with a broad disk at apex; pyrenes 1-2(-4); hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; with a large T-shaped invagination on the ventral side; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to occasionally wet forest.

Elevation Range: 610–1,280 m.