Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Liana.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades deeply 3–lobed, blades 6–16 cm long, 7–20 cm wide. Surfaces softly pubescent on lower or both surfaces. Margins serrate. Petioles with 4–6 scattered, minute, subsessile nectaries. Stipules obliquely ovate, ca. 6 mm long, apex setaceous, deciduous.

Flowers: Flowers solitary; peduncles 3.8–10 cm long, bracts ovate, coherent at base, forming an ampliate tube over base of hypanthium. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, pendent, salverform, 6–9 cm in diameter. hypanthium green, tubular, 5–7 cm long; corona purple or white, tuberculate to dentate. Calyx of 5 sepals, pink, lanceolate to oblong, 4–5 cm long. Corolla of 5 petals, alternate with the sepals, pink, lanceolate to oblong, 4–5 cm long. Stamens 5(–8), on an androgynophore; anthers dithecal, versatile, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, stipitate; ovules anatropous, placentation parietal.

Fruit: Berries yellow at maturity; pericarp softly coriaceous; obovate to oblong; 6–8 cm long; 2.5–4 cm wide; pubescent; aril orange. Seeds numerous; Seed coat reticulate; with an aromatic; succulent; edible aril; embryo embedded in copious oily; soft fleshy endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 18*

Habitat: Mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 850–2225 m.