Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Reclining vines.

Stems: Stems often swollen at the nodes, terete (cylindrical), 4–angled or –ridged, primary stems 10–60 dm long, apparently occasionally rooting at the nodes, purple or green with a purple tinge, glabrous proximally, puberulent in the inflorescence.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades narrowly lanceolate, usually somewhat falcate, 4.5–11 cm long, (0.8–) 1–2.8 cm wide. Apex attenuate to long-acuminate. Base leaf bases often connate around the stem, base cuneate. Blades coriaceous, purple–tinged, especially along the midrib, with only the midvein evident. Margins slightly thickened and usually slightly scarious, occasionally with a few scattered hooked hairs ca. 0.1 mm long. Midvein excentric, ± purple, occasionally with a few scattered hairs on abaxial side. Petioles 0.2–0.9 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence terminal, with 26–204 flowers, 30–50 (–150) cm long, diffuse, pendent, moderately to densely puberulent, the hairs purple or purple–tinged, 0.05–0.15 mm long; bracts green, purple–tinged, narrowly lanceolate to subulate, those of central axis 2.5–11 mm long, those of branches and flowers 1.5–3 mm long; pedicels 6–18 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Sepals 2.3–3 mm long, lanceolate, purple, or green with a purple midvein, opaque, strongly reflexed in the proximal ¼, producing a large transverse bulge, distal part strongly navicular and weakly inrolled toward the apex, oriented at 10° to 30° angle to the pedicel, densely puberulent, margins scarious and densely ciliate, apex long–attenuate. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 5, the antisepalous whorl developed and fertile, usually erect at anthesis, the alternate whorl minute and abortive; filaments of fertile Stamens 3–3.2 mm long, those of the abortive whorl ca. 0.5 mm long, rarely one developing; anthers 0.5 mm long, yellow, those of the abortive whorl 0.35 mm long, not producing pollen. Ovary superior, 1-celled; ovule placentation free-central; styles 3 (–4).

Fruit: Capsules 2.5–3 mm long; ovoid. Seeds 0.9–1.1 mm long; orbicular–reniform; compressed; the surface transversely rugose; perisperm starchy; hard or rarely soft; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Scattered in diverse mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 600–920 m.