Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unbranched caudiciform succulents, 1–5 m tall.

Stems: Stems fleshy, thickened toward the base, light gray, glabrous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars near the apex, pith chambered, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, arranged in a dense apical rosette. Blades obovate, fleshy. Apex subacute to obtuse. Base cuneate. Surfaces glabrous, light green to yellowish green. Margins entire or weakly and distantly toothed in the apical half. Sessile to subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in suberect or spreading axillary, bracteolate racemes. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual, resupinate, protandrous, fragrant, 3–8. Calyx synsepalous; tube 10–ribbed, adnate to the ovary, forming a hypanthium; lobes 5, free, valvate, shorter than the tube. Corolla salverform, white, pale cream, or yellow; tube slender, straight, entire at anthesis, later dorsally cleft for ca. ⅓ its length; lobes 5, valvate, subequal, their margins finely erose. Stamens 5, syngenesious, included within the corolla tube, adnate to the corolla tube below the middle, glabrous to pubescent; anthers dithecal, opening by introrse longitudinal slits, the three dorsal ones longer than the two ventral ones, all with apical tufts of white hairs. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-locular; ovule placentation axile; style slender, exserted; stigma 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 ellipsoid; compressed; at first fleshy; eventually drying; each locule dehiscent by two lateral longitudinal slits. Seeds numerous; small; pale; ovoid to ellipsoid; smooth to minutely papillose with a short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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