Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Fleshy herbs.

Stems: Stems dark reddish purple, erect or ascending from a somewhat decumbent rooting base, 20–50 cm long, usually 5–10 mm in diameter toward base, branched in upper part, internodes 4–8 cm long, finely sparsely strigillose, the hairs 0.1–0.8 mm long, older stems glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or whorled. Blades elliptic–rhombic, elliptic–lanceolate to narrowly rhombic–obovate or sometimes a few of them obovate, (4–)5–9 cm long, 2–3.5(–5) cm wide. Apex acuminate to long-acuminate. Base cuneate, sometimes narrowly so. Upper surfaces sparsely strigillose or puberulent, at least toward base or along lower part of lateral veins; lower surfaces puberulent, sometimes only toward base; dark yellowish green on upper surface; lower surfaces pale green, veins often red, sometimes red over portions of surface, somewhat thick and firm. Margins flat, sparsely ciliate. Palmately 3–5-veined, lateral veins and some tertiary veins impressed on upper surface. Petioles 0.5–1.5 cm long, strigillose. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in spikes several, axillary or terminal, spreading, 5–15 cm long, the rachis to ca. 1–2 mm in diameter, glabrous, flowers loosely to moderately congested, peduncles 0.3–2 cm long, rarely a few of them up to 2.5 cm long, strigillose to glabrate. Flowers bisexual (perfect), perianth absent. Each flower subtended by a peltate bract. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 2. Ovary superior, ovoid, 1-carpellate, 1-celled, apex oblique; ovules 1 per cell, orthotropous, erect; stigmas 1–4, subterminal.

Fruit: Fruit broadly ovoid; ca. 0.7–0.8 mm long; bluntly beaked; papillose–viscid with sessile glands. Seeds 1 per fruit; with scanty endosperm and copious; starchy perisperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 44*

Habitat: Mesic valleys and mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 130–1130 m.