Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Plants extremely variable in habit, from shrubs up to 4 m tall to trees up to 12 m tall.

Stems: Branches grayish brown, chestnut brown, or yellowish brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades broadly obovate to oblanceolate, elliptic, or suborbicular, 1.8–13 cm long, 1–9.3 cm wide. Apex obtuse or rounded. Base acute, rounded, or subtruncate. Surfaces glabrous or pubescent, blades membranous to coriaceous, domatia absent or inconspicuous. Margins revolute or sometimes flat. Lateral veins 4–10 pairs. Sometimes sessile, but usually with petioles 0.5–2 cm long. Stipules deltate–ovate to broadly obovate, up to 6(–15) mm long.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with 1 main axis and 1–2 nodes of verticillate branching, the branches often again divaricately or verticillately branched, peduncles and branches glabrous or pubescent, the ultimate branches terminated by a 3–flowered cymule, peduncles 1–7.4 cm long, lateral flowers of each cymule often on small pedicels, branches subtended by small bracts. Flowers insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual, usually heterostylous, 4–5-merous. Calyx 4-6-lobed, 2–2.8 mm long, glabrous or sometimes pubescent or hirtellous, truncate or with short obtuse lobes, the tube usually shorter than hypanthium. Corolla white, 4-6-lobed, tube 1–2 mm long, somewhat expanded toward apex, throat glabrous, the lobes often thick, broadly ovate to lanceolate, 1.2–2.9 mm long, reflexed at anthesis, glabrous or occasionally pubescent on lower surface and at apex; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments of staminate flowers up to 1 mm long at anthesis, usually inserted on the corolla tube or throat; anthers attached at base, exserted at anthesis in functionally staminate flowers, ovate–oblong, 0.7–0.9 mm long, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous, 1.5–2.5 mm long at anthesis; style 1 or as many as carpels, 0.5–2.5 mm long, glabrous or pubescent, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, lobed or capitate, divaricate, 0.6–2 mm long, glabrous or pubescent, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit oblong–pyriform; 9–15 mm long; ± with disk protruding somewhat from the short persistent calyx; pyrenes 1-2(-4); hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; with T-shaped invaginations on the ventral surface; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 215–1,470 m.