Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Sprawling dioecious small tree, 1.5–3 m tall with a dense crown or sometimes a shrub.

Stems: Branches when fresh green or sometimes purple or maroon-tinged, densely villous-hirtellous with pale brown hairs 0.2–0.5 mm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Spirally arranged. Blades broadly elliptic, broadly ovate, or suborbicular, 7–18.5 cm long, 4.5–10.5 cm wide [length:width 1.5–1.7:1]. Apex acute to rounded, the tip short acuminate. Base broadly cuneate to obtuse or truncate. Surfaces dark green except petioles and veins usually purple or maroon-tinged when fresh; blade thickly chartaceous to subcoriaceous. Adaxially glabrous, rugose with secondary, tertiary, and quaternary venation depressed, abaxially with venation prominulo Margins serrate-dentate, the teeth 0.5–1 mm long, tips indurated. Petioles 1.5–5 cm long, brown villosulous or glabrate. Stipules linear-oblong, 2–2.4 mm long, glabrous, deciduous.

Flowers: Inflorescences of both sexes axillary or occasionally infrafoliar, paniculate cymes with usually four degrees of branching, pyramidal, purple or maroon-tinged, the staminate 12.5–14 cm long, 10–13 cm wide, the pistillate 9–13 cm long, 6–13 cm wide, both with the peduncle 2–4 cm; axes densely rufous hirtellous, the hairs 0.2–0.3 mm long, bracts glabrous, ovate-elliptic or subulate, those on primary branches 1.8–2.0 mm long, those on secondary branches 1.2–1.5 mm long, those on tertiary branches 1–1.2 mm long, pedicels with 1–3 glabrous linear-oblong to subulate bracts 0.5–1.5 mm long; flowers on glabrous pedicels 0.5–1 mm long, hirtellous below articulation with ultimate axis. Staminate flowers spreading at anthesis. Pistillate flowers glabrous, subequal, not spreading at anthesis. Calyx of 5 sepals. Staminate flowers with sepals purplish green, ovate, 1.0–1.2 mm long, apex acute to acuminate, glabrous, margins entire. Pistilate flowers with sepals reddish purple, ovate-deltate, 1–1.4 mm long, apex acute. Corolla of 5 petals. Staminate and pistillate flowers with petals white, ovate, similar to sepals in size but thinner, glabrous, margins entire. Stamen of staminate flowers with 5 filaments 2–2.5 mm long, anthers transverse-ellipsoid, 0.5–0.6 mm long, 0.6–0.7 mm wide. Pistillate flowers with 5 staminodes 0.3–0.4 mm long. Ovary superior, pistillate flowers with a conical pistil 1.2–1.5 mm long; stigma lobes 2(3), papillose. Staminate flowers with a pistillode 0.8–1.0 mm.

Fruit: Berries globose; 2.5–4 mm in diameter; ripening red or purple tinged; glabrous. Infructescence 8–14.5 cm long; 6–14 cm wide. Seeds (2‒)4; subglobose; tan; 1.2–1.5 mm long; seed coat rugose-reticulate; surrounded by a thin aril.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Growing along streams or on windward upper valley slopes and summit areas above the valleys.

Elevation Range: 740–1280 m.