Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Habit unknown.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblanceolate to obovate, blades 27–45 cm long, 4.5–11 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Base long-attenuate, narrowing imperceptibly into a winged petiole. Upper surfaces green, glabrous; lower surfaces whitish green, glabrous. Margins remotely callose–denticulate. Petioles 4–7 cm long, winged. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 8–10–flowered, in axillary racemes, peduncles 10–15 mm long, pedicels 5–12 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 4–6 mm long, 3–4 mm wide. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes narrowly triangular, 3–4 mm long, 1–2 mm wide, distinct or rarely connate, apex acuminate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, white, sometimes with pale lilac longitudinal stripes, 50–60 mm long, 5–9 mm wide, glabrous, the tube arcuate, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes spreading, ¼–⅓ as long as the tube, muricate. 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 orange; obovoid to ellipsoid; 10–12 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: Formerly occurring in wet forest; windward slopes.

Elevation Range: