Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs to small trees.

Stems: Bark fissured, flaky, vegetative buds narrow, pointed, with spatulate scales ca. 17 mm long and 9 mm wide.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades ovate to lanceolate or occasionally broadly ovate, 4–6 cm long, 2–3(–4) cm wide. Apex acute, sometimes a little drawn out and twisted. Base cuneate to rounded. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Midrib often red. Petioles 10–20(–30) mm long, 2–3 mm wide, often at right angles or more to the stems, petioles often red. Stipules vestigial or absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences of 4–6 pairs of cymules, glabrous or appressed short–pubescent, peduncles ca. 13 mm long and 1.5 mm wide, pedicels ca. 4 mm long and 1 mm wide, bracts ovate or lanceolate, 4 mm long, 3 mm wide, caducous. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Hypanthium well–developed above ovary, 3–4 mm high, 3.5–5 mm wide; fruiting hypanthium 4–6 mm long, 5–8 mm wide, with prominent veins, glabrous or glabrate. Sepals distinct, triangular, 1.5–2 mm long, 2–2.5 mm wide, imbricate. Petals distinct, obovate, 3–5 mm long, 2–3 mm wide, imbricate. Stamens numerous, 1.5–2 cm long, distinct; filaments distinct; anthers dithecal. Ovary nearly superior. Placentas axile, peltate; ovules numerous, anatropous; style 2–3 cm long, simple; stigma small.

Fruit: Capsules enclosed by hypanthium; exserted.

Ploidy: 2n = 22

Habitat: Ridges at higher elevations.

Elevation Range: 600–1,300 m.