Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Branched shrubs 1.5–3 m tall.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades narrowly elliptic to lanceolate, blades 12–21 cm long, 2.5–5 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base obtuse to cuneate. Upper surfaces green, glabrous; lower surfaces pale green, glabrous or pubescent. Margins callose–serrulate. Petioles 2.2–10 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 6–12–flowered, in axillary racemes, peduncles 20–35 mm long, pedicels 8–12 mm long; hypanthium broadly obconical, 4–6 mm long, 3–5 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes triangular, 3–5 mm long, 2–3 mm wide, distinct or rarely connate, apex acute, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, purplish, 30–35 mm long, 3–4 mm wide, glabrous, the tube suberect, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes spreading. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers 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 unknown. Seeds unknown.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 1,000–1,080 m.