Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 0.3–2 m tall, with white, yellow, or tan latex.

Stems: Stems subherbaceous, woody only at base, unbranched or rarely sparingly branched from base, unarmed, muricate, or aculeate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblanceolate to narrowly obovate or elliptic, blades 11–32 cm long, 3–9 cm wide. Apex narrowly acuminate. Base attenuate to cuneate. Upper surfaces green, glabrous or sparsely pubescent; lower surfaces whitish green, pubescent at least on the midrib and veins. Margins minutely callose–denticulate. Petioles 2–10 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 6–20–flowered in axillary racemes, pubescent, the rachis sometimes not expanded, the raceme thus appearing subumbellate; peduncles 15–60 mm long, pedicels 6–10 mm long; hypanthium obovoid, 4–5 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes narrowly triangular, 2–5 mm long, distinct or rarely connate, apex acuminate; distinct or rarely connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, glabrous or pubescent, rarely muricate, white, sometimes tinged purplish, 30–35 mm long, 3–4 mm wide, glabrous or sparsely pubescent, the tube suberect to slightly curved, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading, ¼–⅓ as long as the tube. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous or sparsely pubescent; anthers pubescent or rarely glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, 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 yellow to yellowish orange; globose; 4–6 mm long. 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:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: 300–730 m.