Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, sparingly branched shrub to 7.5 dm tall (in cultivation forming massive hanging plants with stems to 10 dm long).

Stems: Stems often swollen at the nodes, compressed–terete, glabrous or very sparsely puberulent with minute± purplish weakly hooked or curved hairs.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades linear–lanceolate or linear–elliptic, falcate, 5.3–7 cm long (to 12 cm in cultivation), 5–7 mm wide (to 11 mm in cultivation). Apex long-attenuate. Base narrowly acute, gradually tapering and weakly connate. Lower surfaces and margins very sparsely puberulent near base; blades thick, firm and somewhat succulent, glossy. Margins slightly revolute. 1(–3)-veined, only the midrib prominent, strongly raised on abaxial surface and impressed on adaxial surface. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence terminal, with 14–66 flowers (up to 70 in cultivation), 4–9 cm long (up to 15 cm long in cultivation), diffuse, the branches and pedicels oriented to give a one–sided effect; bracts pale green to purple adaxially, the lowermost 11 mm long, 7–8 mm wide, those of the branches and flowers 2.3–5 mm long; internodes 3–28 mm long; pedicels 8–15 (–19) mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Sepals 4–5 mm long, lanceolate, greenish white or yellowish white adaxially, somewhat petaloid, often pale purple abaxially, margins conspicuously scarious, glabrous, strongly concave in upper half, shallowly navicular and usually inrolled in the upper 2/3, oriented at 90° to the pedicel at staminate stage and to 60° to the pedicel at the pistillate stage, apex weakly acuminate. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 10; filaments dimorphic, the antisepalous whorl 4.7–4.8 mm long, the alternate whorl 4.2–4.5 mm long; anthers ca. 1 mm long, subequal, yellow. Ovary superior, 1-celled; ovule placentation free-central; styles 5–6 (–7).

Fruit: Capsules ca. 3.3–4.5 mm long; broadly ovoid. Seeds 0.6–0.7 mm long; orbicular–reniform; compressed; the faces transversely rugose; the margins papillose; margins of seed coat cells obtuse to rounded; perisperm starchy; hard or rarely soft; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: In diverse mesic forest on vertical cliffs.

Elevation Range: ca. 790 m.