Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: 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. Base sessile. Surfaces glabrous, muricate in juveniles. Margins entire or callose–crenulate, irregularly cleft or lobed in juveniles. Petioles absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–10–flowered, peduncles 30–60 mm long, pedicels 5– 15 mm long; hypanthium obovoid, 6–10 mm long, glabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes connate into an irregularly toothed sheath 2–4 mm long. Corolla dark magenta, 6–9 cm long. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column dark magenta, glabrous; anthers glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs; anther tube 2.7–3.4 times longer than wide, pubescent at base on the connectives. 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.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 275–760 m.