Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Scandent shrubs 1.5–4 m tall.

Stems: Stems many-branched, subglabrous below, strigose to pilose in upper parts.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades narrowly ovate, usually 3–8 cm long, 1–2.5 cm wide. Apex acute or acuminate. Base cuneate to rounded. Surfaces ± strigose. Margins entire. Petioles usually 0.3–1 cm long, strigose. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers axillary and terminal, cylindrical racemes 1.5–2 cm long. peduncles usually 3–10 cm long, pubescent with appressed to spreading hairs. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Each flower subtended by a bract and 2 bracteoles' pedicels up to 2 mm long, bract ovate, ca. 3 mm long, apex acute or short-acuminate, midrib prominent, bracteoles longer than bract, more than ½ as long as flower, apex curved, conspicuously keeled with a prominent, irregularly dentate crest. Calyx of 5 sepals, subequal, lanceolate, 3–5 mm long, subglabrous to pubescent, 3–nerved, mindnerve not excurrent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 5, all fertile. Ovary superior, 2–3(4)-carpellate, the carpels connate to form a compound, 1-celled ovary; ovule placentation basal, free-central, or rarely apical; style 1, often lobed.

Fruit: Utricles 1.5–2 mm long. Seeds 1 per fruit; the surface usually lustrous; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 28

Habitat:

Elevation Range: ca 300 m.