Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Treelet, 0.6–1.2 m tall.

Stems: Stems usually branched, 13–20 mm in diameter, moderately leafy toward apex, erect or ascending, 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 oblanceolate or elliptic, 11.4–28 cm long, 3.5–7.5 cm wide. Apex acute. Base attenuate. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins coarsely irregularly serrate, often with 1–6 triangular lobules 7–12 mm long toward base. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 5.0–12.5 cm long, 1/5–⅖ as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–12 flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 3–4 mm long; rachis 6–8 mm long; bracts 0.7–1.0 mm long, triangular or deltate (rarely becoming larger, foliaceous, oblanceolate), persistent, each subtending a pedicel, pubescent; pedicels 7–12 mm long, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 8–10 mm long, 1/5–¼ 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, 2–3 mm long, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium, glabrous or pubescent. Corolla 37 mm long, white, sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, glabrous; the tube strongly curved or arcuate, laterally compress, 3.2-8.5 mm tall above the middle, dorsally cleft to about the middle, with a small knob at the terminus of the cleft; lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, equaling or shorter than the tube (rarely somewhat longer), acute or acuminate at apex, somewhat dimorphic, the dorsal pair longer, the ventral three 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; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube; anther tube 2.5 mm in diameter, pubescent, surface of the tube glabrous or sparsely pubescent, dorsal anthers 7 mm long, occluding the orifice of the tube, ventral anthers 5.5 mm long, with apical tufts of stiff white hairs. 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; 9–11 mm long; 4.5–9.0 mm in diameter; subglobose or cylindric. Seeds numerous; 1.0–1.1 mm long; 0.6–0.8 mm wide; grayish white; ellipsoid; compressed; dull; transversely rugose (Type G of Buss et al. 2001).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic forest.

Elevation Range: ca. 400 m.