Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Liana-like shrubs 0.3–2 m tall, with tan latex.

Stems: Stems subherbaceous, reclining on moss–covered tree trunks and rooting at the nodes, or epiphytic, unbranched or sparingly branched from base.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly elliptic, 10–19 cm long, 3.5–8.5 cm wide. Apex narrowly acuminate to subcuspidate. Base cuneate to rounded. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces pubescent. Margins callose–denticulate. Petioles 2.5–10 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–12–flowered, in axillary racemes, the rachis sometimes not expanded, the raceme thus appearing subumbellate, pubescent; peduncles 20–45 mm long; pedicels 4–16 mm long; hypanthium obovoid, 6–10 mm long, 5–6 mm wide, pubescent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes deltate to narrowly triangular, 2–4 mm long, distinct or rarely connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, yellowish but appearing pale rose due to the dark red pubescence, 37–42 mm long, 4–5 mm wide, the tube gently curved, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading, ¼ as long as the tube or less. 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 dark orange; ovoid; 7–15 mm long. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest.

Elevation Range: 1,300–1600 m.