Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Terrestrial, unbranched shrubs.

Stems: Stems woody, 1–3 m long, muricate in juveniles, becoming smooth with age.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades elliptic or oblanceolate, 30–55 cm long, 6–12 cm wide. Apex acute. Surfaces glabrous, muricate in juveniles. Margins entire or callose–crenulate, irregularly cleft or lobed in juveniles. Sessile or on petioles 0.3-3 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–10–flowered, axillary, peduncles 30–60 mm long, pedicels 5– 15 mm long; hypanthium obconic or cylindrical, 6–10 mm long, glabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes connate into an irregularly toothed sheath 2–4 mm long, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dark magenta, 6–9 cm long, glabrous or pubescent, rarely muricate, the tube suberect to strongly arcuate, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column dark magenta, glabrous; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed, glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs; anther tube 3.4-4.6 times longer than wide, the surfaces glabrous; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries obpyriform; 10–12 mm long. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 28

Habitat: Mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 275–760 m (see Clyde's comments).