Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs ca. 1 m tall.

Stems: Stems apparently few–branched, rounded to angular, pubescent with multicellular hairs or glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves in whorls of 3–4 per node, rarely opposite, often closely spaced, borne on upper 3–7 nodes. Those leaves at a node unequal, symmetrical, oblanceolate to elliptic, 10–21 cm long, 2.5–6 cm wide. Apex acuminate or rarely obtuse. Base cuneate to attenuate. Upper surfaces very sparsely strigose or glabrate; lower surfaces very sparsely to sparsely puberulent or glabrate; Blades thin, flaccid. Margins entire or toothed. Petioles 0.6–3.8 cm long, glabrate or puberulent, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, rarely 2 in cymes, arising in the leaf axils, moderately to densely puberulent or occasionally glabrate, peduncles 0–7 mm long, elongating up to 12 mm long in fruit, pedicels slender, (9–)15–30 mm long, bracts filiform, 4–6 mm long, caducous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx zygomorphic, 2–5(6)-lobed, fusiform in bud, tipped by a beak ca. 4–5 mm long, in anthesis pale green, thin, 15–19 mm long, deciduous after anthesis, tube 7–12 mm long, spathaceous or variously cleft into equal or unequal lobes, glabrous or with a few scattered hairs toward base, upper 3 lobes ca. 3–6 mm long, lower 2 lobes 6–8 mm long, all lobes tardily separating, deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, tube subcylindrical, curved near middle, 12–16 mm long, ca. 4 mm in diameter medially, glabrous, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, the lobes imbricate in bud, upper lobes broadly elliptic, ca. 6–7 mm long, lower lobes broadly ovate, ca. 8–9 mm long. Stamens 5, inserted about halfway up corolla tube, the 2 upper Stamens fertile, others staminodial, +/– with abortive anthers; fertile anthers coherent positioned in throat of corolla tube, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by apical pores. Ovary superior, glabrous, oblong–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, placentas 2, ± intruded, rarely joined in center and dividing ovary into 2 cells; ovules numerous, anatropous, pubescent or glabrous, apex rounded or with a stylar beak; style ca. 4.5 mm long, glabrous; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Fruit a fleshy or firm berry; white; narrowly ellipsoid; ca. 1.8–2.5 cm long; often tipped by the persistent stylar beak. Seeds numerous; ellipsoid; minute; usually less than ca. 1 mm long; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Apparently rare in wet gulches and along streams in mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: ca. 220 m.