Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub.

Stems: Stems woody, erect, 15–30 dm long, leafy in upper ½.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades narrowly elliptic to elliptic, 30–65 cm long, 2–10 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces densely white tomentose except on the midrib. Margins callose–denticulate, revolute or flat. Sessile or subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 3–7–branched at base, 15–40 cm long, pedicels 12–15 mm long, tomentose, bracts subulate, 10–18 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 4–6 mm long, white tomentose. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes subulate, 4–7 mm long, sepals connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dorsally cleft almost to base, blue, 28-32 mm long, 3-5 mm wide, pubescent, the lobes spirally revolute, tube suberect. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; staminal column pubescent; anthers glabrous or pubescent, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, 2-celled, often crowned with an annular nectary disk; ovule placentation axile, or when 1-celled with 2 parietal placentas; stigmas wet or dry, 2-lobed, 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: Capsules cylindrical to obovoid; 8–18 mm long; white tomentose; dehiscent at apex by 2 valves. Seeds numerous; smooth; brownish; ca. 0.5 mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 28*

Habitat: Occurring in mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 600–1,500 m.