Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs to small trees 0.5–8 m tall.

Stems: New growth stellate and glandular pubescent, usually appearing floccose.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades transversely ovate in outline, 6–20 cm long, 8–25 cm wide. Base cordate. Surfaces sparsely stellate pubescent, leaf blades discolorous. Margins usually acutely 3-lobed, 5-lobed, or 5-lobed and coarsely serrate. Petioles usually more than ½ as long as blades. Stipules subulate to linear–lanceolate, 3–14 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils, but often appearing racemose or corymbose by reduction of upper leaves, pedicels 2–12 cm long, articulate apically; involucral bracts (6)7–11(12), linear–subulate, 10–22 mm long, 15 mm wide, often deciduous after anthesis. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx thin, 1.6–4 cm long, campanulate to tubular or suburceolate, composed of connate sepals, 5-lobed or 5-parted, with broadly triangular lobes to the middle or beyond, each lobe with 3 major eglandular veins, lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, rotate to campanulate or tubular, corolla of 5 petals, spreading beyond calyx tube, creamy white, changing to rose during the day, rarely pink and unchanging, usually 4–7 cm long, lower surface usually densely pubescent, obovate, distinct from each other but adnate at base to staminal column, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, basically included; antheriferous for most of its length; anthers purplish or occasionally white, monothecal; filaments terminating the staminal column or borne below a 5-dentate apex. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, 5-celled or rarely appearing 10-celled by a vertical partition, placentation axile; ovules 3 or more per cell; style exceeding the staminal column, 5- branched, branches and stigmas purplish or occasionally white.

Fruit: Loculicidally dehiscent capsules; capsules broadly ovoid to globose; apex retuse; 1.6–2.8 cm long; coarsely pubescent with simple hairs externally and along the inner valve margins; valves thin walled. Seeds up to 60 per cell; dark green to dark brown; reniform; 2–3 mm long; with a dorsal corona of simple and 2–3–branched hairs.

Ploidy: 2n = 84; 92; 100; 110; 120

Habitat: Cultivated in open areas and in forests.

Elevation Range: 0–365 m.