Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs of unbranched stems below dense apical rosette of leaves.

Stems: Stems erect or ascending,10–54 mm in diameter below the dense apical rosette of leaves, usually unbranched, light gray or brown, unarmed, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, well dispersed on the distal stem or congested into apical rosettes. Blades ovate 5.2–12.0 cm long, 3.4–7.0 cm wide. Apex acute or acuminate. Base cordate. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins serrate or crenate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 2–8 cm long, ½–⅔ as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 6–24–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 11–16 mm long; rachis 5–26 mm long; bracts triangular or deltate, 0.8–1.7 mm long, pubescent, persistent, each subtending a pedicel; pedicels 3–9 mm long, shorter than the supported flower, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 3.0–6.5 mm long, 3.5–4.0 mm in diameter, ¼–3/10 as long as corolla, ellipsoid; hypanthium 3.0-6.5 mm long, 3.5-4.0 mm in diameter, 1/4-3/10 as long as corolla, ellipsoid. 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, 0.8–1.5 mm long, 0.8–1.0 mm wide, pubescent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium. Corolla sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, 22–25 mm long, greenish, glabrous; tube 14–16 mm long, 1.5–2.5 mm tall at base, 2.5–4.0 mm tall above middle, gently curved with 1 dorsal and 2 lateral knobs, dorsally cleft to about the middle; lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, acute or acuminate at apex somewhat dimorphic, dorsal lobes 8–10 mm long, 0.9–1.8 mm wide, ½–¾ as long as tube; ventral lobes 7–9 mm long, 1.2–1.7 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 17–21 mm long; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube; anther tube 1.8–2.2 mm in diameter, glabrous; dorsal anthers occluding the orifice of the tube, 8–9 mm long, ½–¾ as long as filament tube; ventral anthers 6–8 mm long, with tufts of hairs 1.4–2.0 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; 6–7 mm in diameter; globose. Seeds numerous; 1.4–1.7 mm long; 0.7–1.0 mm wide; grayish white; ellipsoid; compressed; dull; transversely rugose (Type G of Buss et al. 2001).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Cliffs.

Elevation Range: