Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub, 1–2.5 m tall.

Stems: Stems, stem usually branched, erect or ascending, light gray or brown, unarmed, 6–14 mm in diameter, glabrous, moderately leafy toward apex with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, scattered along distal portion of stem. Blades ovate or narrowly ovate, 11–24 cm long, 4.5–15 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base truncate, subcordate, rounded, or obtuse. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins commonly coarsely biserrate, often with 1–4 triangular lobules per side toward base; lobules triangular or deltate, 2–30 mm long, 3–13 mm wide, their margin serrulate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 7.0–19.5 cm long, ½ as long as to a little longer than lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–12–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 8–25 mm long; rachis 4–34 mm long; bracts 0.5–1.7 mm long, triangular or deltate (rarely becoming larger, foliaceous, oblanceolate), persistent, each subtending a pedicel, pubescent; pedicels 9–15 mm long, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 6–9 mm long, 4–7 mm in diameter, 1/8–1/6 as long as corolla, ellipsoid, narrowly ellipsoid, or narrowly obconic; hypanthium 6–9 mm long, 4–7 mm in diameter, 1/8–1/6 as long as corolla, ellipsoid, narrowly ellipsoid, or narrowly obconic. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx synsepalous, actinomorphic; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a glabrous hypanthium 1/10–⅓ as long as the corolla; lobes 5, 0.6–0.9 mm long, 0.3–0.7 mm wide, pubescent, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium. Corolla 45–62 mm long, white, sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, glabrous; tube strongly curved or arcuate, laterally compressed, dorsally cleft to about the middle, with a small knob at the terminus of the cleft, 24–37 mm long, 2.5–3.8 mm tall at base, 4.5–8.5 mm tall above middle; lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, equaling or shorter than the tube, acute or acuminate at apex, somewhat dimorphic, dorsal lobes 21–25 mm long, 2.0–2.8 mm wide, ⅔ as long to almost as long as tube, ventral lobes 18–23 mm long, 1.5–2.2 mm wide, usually connate for ¼–1⁄2 their length. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filaments connate, free from the corolla, inserted on the rim of the hypanthium; filament tube 35–51 mm long; anther tube 2.5–3.5 mm in diameter, glabrous; anthern tube glabrous or sparsely pubescent; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube, dorsal anthers occluding the orifice of the tube, 11–13 mm long, 1/5–⅖ as long as filament tube, with a triangular scale of concrescent hairs 0.4–0.7 mm long at apex, ventral anthers 7.5–9.0 mm long, with tufts of hairs 1.8–3.6 mm long at apex. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-loculed, crowned by an annular nectary; placentae axile; ovules many; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near the apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit a small purple fleshy thin–walled berry; globose; cylindric; or ellipsoid 7–16 mm long; 7–11 mm in diameter. Seeds numerous; 1.0–1.2 mm long; 0.4–0.6 mm wide ; grayish white; globose; cylindric; or broadly ellipsoid; compressed; dull; transversely rugose (Type G of Buss et al. 2001).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Wet to mesic forests.

Elevation Range: 245–760 m.