Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Subshrubs, usually few–branched.

Stems: Stems weakly erect to scandent, terete (cylindrical) to weakly quadrangular, rarely sharply so, (6–)10–60 dm long, glabrous and usually conspicuously glaucous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades ovate to broadly ovate, elliptic–ovate, ovate–cordate, elliptic–oblong, elliptic, or sometimes lanceolate, 3–16 cm long, (0.8–)2.3–7.5 cm wide. Apex acuminate to long-acuminate. Base broadly cuneate, rounded, subcordate, or occasionally attenuate. Surfaces glabrous or lower surfaces hirtellous, sometimes mostly along veins; glossy, thin and membranous to thickened and subcoriaceous or sometimes coriaceous; lower surfaces also usually glaucous. Margins entire, flat or revolute. Lateral veins slightly to strongly impressed on upper surface, slightly to conspicuously raised on lower surface, higher order venation obscurely or sometimes conspicuously reticulate. Petioles 0–1 cm long, bases slightly connate. Stipules deltate, usually carinate, 3–9 mm long, slightly connate and adnate to petioles, apex with a slender mucro (1–) 2–5 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal, compound, decussate, paniculate inflorescences, composed usually of congested cymes, these sometimes elongating monochasially and becoming open, pedicels quadrangular, 2–8(–15) mm long, inflorescences glabrous and usually strongly glaucous throughout, bracts of ultimate branches and each flower usually foliaceous and partly obscuring the flower, occasionally small and scale-like; hypanthium turbinate, 1.5-2.2 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect) and pistillate; insect-pollinated. Calyx 4-5-lobed, lobes usually foliaceous, oblong–ovate, ovate to broadly ovate, (2–)4–8 mm long, (1–)1.5–2.5 mm wide, enlarging somewhat in fruit. Corolla pale green to greenish yellow, greenish white, or cream–colored (var. remyi), rarely tinged purple, fleshy, usually glaucous, salverform, the tube (6–)9–17 mm long, larger corollas slightly enlarged distally, the limb not strongly quadrangular in bud, but apex depressed, 4-5-lobed, the lobes (1.5–) 2.5–7(–10) mm long at anthesis, strongly inflexed in bud, more or less revolute; nectary disc present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted ca. 1-3 mm below corolla tube sinuses; anthers sessile or on short filaments, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior or partly so, 2(-4)-locular; ovules few to numerous on fleshy placentas near middle of septum; style as many as carpels, cylindrical to filiform, terminal, slender, woolly–villous in lower ⅔ – ⅓, apex 2(–4)–lobed; stigma bilobed or subcapitate, included or exserted.

Fruit: Capsules turbinate to subglobose; 2–4 mm long; 3–7 mm in diameter; dehiscing loculicidally across disk; pyrenes tardily dehiscing across disk septicidally; endocarp strongly to sometimes thinly sclerified; disk flat to slightly raised. Seeds dark brown; irregularly cuneiform; irregularly angled; darkly granular to reticulate–pitted; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to wet forest; sometimes on windswept ridges.

Elevation Range: 400–1,820 m.