Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs.

Stems: Stems usually branched, 8–14 mm in diameter, erect or ascending, light gray or brown, unarmed, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars toward apex, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, scattered along upper portion of stem. Blades oblanceolate or elliptic in outline, 12–23 cm long, 3.5–4.0 cm wide, cleft or parted into 4–7 pairs of shallowly triangular or deltate segments 6–15 mm long and 10–15 mm wide. Apex acute. Base attenuate. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins denticulate or serrulate. Pinnately veined. Petioles terete (cylindrical), 2.5–5.5 cm long, ¼–3/10 as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–6–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 4–5 mm long; rachis 4–5 mm long; bracts triangular or deltate (rarely becoming larger, foliaceous, oblanceolate), persistent, each subtending a pedicel, glabrous; pedicels 5–7 mm long, ascending or spreading, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base; hypanthium 4–5 mm long, ca. 3 mm in diameter, ca. 1/5 as long as corolla, obovoid. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx synsepalous, actinomorphic; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a glabrous hypanthium 1/10–⅓ as long as the corolla; lobes5, 0.8–1.0 mm long, ca. 0.5 mm wide, glabrous, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium. Corolla sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, 18–19 mm long, greenish, glabrous, the tube gently curved, 2.3-4.2 mm tall above the middle, laterally compressed, dorsally cleft to about the middle, with a small knob at the terminus of the cleft; tube ca. 11 mm long, ca. 1.4 mm tall at base, ca. 3 mm tall above middle; lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, acute or acuminate at apex, somewhat dimorphic, dorsal lobes ca. 8 mm long, ca. 1.5 mm wide, 3/4 as long as tube; ventral lobes ca. 6 mm long, ca. 1.2 mm wide, usually connate for ¼–1⁄2 their length. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filaments connate, free from the corolla, inserted on the rim of the hypanthium; filament tube ca. 14 mm long; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8-2/3 as long as the filament tube, dorsal anthers ca. 7 mm long, ca. ½ as long as filament tube, occluding the orifice of the tube; ventral anthers 4.5–5.0 mm long, with tufts of hairs ca. 2 mm long at apex; anther tube ca. 2 mm in diameter, glabrous. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-loculed, crowned by an annular nectary; placentae axile; ovules many; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near the apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit a small purple fleshy thin-walled berry; 5–8 mm in diameter; globose. Seeds numerous; 1.3–1.5 mm long; 0.7–0.8 mm wide; grayish white; ellipsoid; compressed; dull; transversely rugose (Type G of Buss et al. 2001).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic forests.

Elevation Range: 1375–1830 m.