Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees 5–7 m tall.

Stems: Trunk up to 30 cm in diameter, smooth, grayish bark and prominent petiole scars on young branches, glabrate to stellate puberulent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to orbicular, 10–15 cm long, sometimes 3–5–angled. Base deeply cordate but usually with an open sinus. Margins entire to slightly undulate–dentate. Petioles 4–10 cm long. Stipules 1.5–2 mm long, subulate to triangular, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers borne near the ends of branches, 1-2 in the leaf axils, pedicels 1.5-3(-14) cm long; involucral bracts usually 5, connate slightly at base, toothlike, 0.5-2(-3) mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx tubular to subsaccate, 1.5–2.5(–3) cm long, 2–3–cleft or 5-lobed, sepals connate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla usually zygomorphic, tubular to rotate or reflexed, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, greenish yellow externally, yellowish green fading to purplish within, 2–5(–5.5) cm long, curved and narrowly convolute with the 2 lower petals shorter and usually spreading or reflexed apically, densely stellate pubescent on lower surface and often on upper surface near apex, usually conspicuously veined. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, exserted or exposed apically by the spreading lower petals; antheriferous in upper ⅓–½ below the 5–dentate apex; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, placentation axile, 5-celled; ovules (2)3 per cell; style exceeding the staminal column; style branches 5, erect; stigmas terminal, capitate or discoid.

Fruit: Capsules woody; oblong–ovoid to ellipsoid–ovoid; grooved; apiculate; 2.2–3 cm long; loculicidally dehiscent; mesocarp strongly developed; reticulate; endocarp segments 10. Seeds reniform; up to 7 mm long; densely grayish white lanate; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 40*

Habitat: Dry to mesic forest; lava flows.

Elevation Range: 600–1525 m