Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Compact shrubs or sometimes small trees 0.5–2 m tall, in protected sites up to 4 m tall, glabrous throughout.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, distichous. Blades narrowly oblong to narrowly oblong–elliptic or occasionally narrowly elliptic, (6–)8–14(–17) cm long, (1.5–)2–3.5(–4) cm wide. Apex obtuse to rounded, sometimes minutely emarginate. Base obliquely subcordate. Blades coriaceous. Margins entire. Petioles 0–1(–2) mm long. Stipules deltate, 2–3 mm long, weakly erose.

Flowers: Flowers in cyathia 3–10(–12) in branched, open to sometimes condensed, cymose inflorescences usually 2–6(–7) cm long, peduncles 3–10(–12) mm long, sparsely to moderately puberulent. involucre broadly campanulate, 1.5–2.2 mm high, 3.5–4.5 mm wide, puberulent, sometimes very sparsely so, the glands 5–6, greenish yellow, green, or red, upper surface glabrous, lower surface puberulent, occasionally with a white appendage. Flowers unisexual and highly reduced. Pistillate flowers solitary, on a gynophore; staminate flowers in 5 groups or cymules, each with 1 to several flowers. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Male flower reduced to a single stamen, with an articulation at junction of pedicel and filament, subtended by slender bracteoles. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate; ovules 1 per cell, anatropous.

Fruit: Capsules brilliant red; sometimes pink tinged red (and then perhaps not fully ripe); globose; 14–25 mm long and nearly so in diameter; glabrous; usually noticeably exserted from involucre; gynophores red; erect; exserted 1–4 mm from involucre; puberulent. Seeds brown to grayish brown; globose or broadly obovoid; 3.5–4 mm long; seed coat slightly wrinkled.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Wet forests.

Elevation Range: 600–830 m.