Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees 2–6 m tall.

Stems: Young stems strigose to coarsely puberulent or rarely appressed hirtellous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades elliptic–oblanceolate, oblong–elliptic, or spatulate, 42–120 mm long, 15–35 mm wide. Apex acute to rounded. Base attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrate or sparsely strigose; lower surfaces strigose, especially along veins, blades chartaceous. Margins entire. Pinnately veined. Petioles 6–20 mm long. Stipules 5–10 mm long, connate in lower ¼–1⁄2, both surfaces strigose, usually with a glabrous patch on upper vz, margins sparsely ciliate and dentate with conspicuous appendages, apex attenuate to a conspicuous appendage.

Flowers: Flowers 3(-5), sometimes fewer pistillate flowers developing into fruit, 6-9-merous, peduncles glabrous or densely coarsely puberulent. Staminate flowers with peduncles ca. 4-8 mm long; pistillate flowers with peduncles 4-20 mm long. Flowers unisexual, dioecious, often heterostylous; insect-pollinated. Calyx of staminate flowers cup-shaped, ca. 0.4–0.6 mm long, the teeth irregularly whitish ciliate. Calyx of pistillate flowers cup-shaped, 0.3–0.6 mm long, the teeth irregularly whitish ciliate. Corolla of staminate flowers campanulate, ca. 6–9 mm long, the lobes 2.5–3.5 mm long; corolla of pistillate flowers narrowly funnelform, 4–5 mm long, the lobes 1–2.3 mm long. Nectary disk usually present. Stamens alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted at base of corolla tube; filaments long–exserted; anthers pendulous, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2(-4)-celled; ovule 1 per cell, basal, anatropous; style as many as carpels, 2(-4)lobed, divided nearly to base, terminal, slender; stigmas lobed or capitate, long-exserted, papillose-hirsute, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceious; juicy; bright reddish orange; ovoid; 7–9 mm long; apex naked; with 2(-4); 1-seeded; planoconvex pyrenes. Seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occuring in mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 600–1,330 m.