Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small shrubby trees (2–)3–6 m tall.

Stems: Stems many-branched, rounded to angular, pubescent with multicellular hairs or glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, borne on upper 3–4 nodes. Those leaves of a pair unequal, symmetrical, elliptic to elliptic–obovate,6–12(–15) cm long, 2.5–4.6 cm wide. Apex acute to short-acuminate. Base cuneate to attenuate. Upper surfaces sparsely hirtellous; lower surfaces glabrous or sparsely brownish puberulent only along the veins, glabrate with age, blades chartaceous. Margins serrulate or occasionally serrate. Petioles 2–4 cm long, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 3–5 in umbelliform cymes, usually in the upper leaf axils, moderately brown short–pilose throughout, peduncles 25–35 mm long, pedicels unequal, 15–30 mm long, bracts linear, 6–7 mm long, foliaceous, distinct or occasionally connate. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–5(6)-lobed, nearly actinomorphic, green, 3–9 mm long, cleft to within 1–2 mm of base, the lobes very narrowly deltate, moderately brown short–pilose, glabrous within, apex acute; deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, tube cylindrical, straight or curved, ca. 12 mm long, sparsely puberulent, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, lobes ca. 2–3 mm long, imbricate in bud. 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, oblong–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, placentas 2, ± intruded, rarely joined in center and dividing ovary into 2 cells; ovules numerous, anatropous, glabrous, apex rounded or with a stylar beak; style ca. 2 mm long, glabrous; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Fruit a fleshy or firm berry; (immature) white; subglobose to ovoid; ca. 1 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: Wet forests.

Elevation Range: 940–1,500 m.