Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, 2–7 m tall, terrestrial or epiphytic.

Stems: Stems branched repeatedly, spreading, light gray or light brown, glabrous or rarely pubescent, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars near apex, pith solid, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblanceolate or elliptic, 8–22 cm long, 1.5–4.5 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or sparsely pubescent along midrib; blades chartaceous, dull; upper surfaces green; lower surfaces pale green sometimes suffused with purple. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 2–5 cm long, glabrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary, subumbellately racemose, 2(–4)–flowered, glabrous; peduncle 5–12 cm long, deflexed, bibracteate in upper half or at apex; pedicels 2–3.5 cm long, abruptly ascending, bibracteolate at middle. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1.5–2 cm long, 1.5–2 cm in diameter, hemispheric or obconic, glabrous. Calyx synsepalous; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a hypanthium, hemispheric, obconic, obovoid, turbinate, or rarely oblong, smooth or with 10 longitudinal furrows, rarely muricate or with 10 longitudinal ridges; lobes 5, valvate, either less than 1⁄2 as long as the corolla, distinct or rarely connate at base, persistent, triangular or deltate, rarely oblong or ovate, firm, green, or as long as the corolla (rarely only ⅔ as long), connate for 1/5–⅘ their length, deciduous, mimicking the corolla in shape, texture, and color. Perianth 4–5.5 cm long, bilabiate, dark purple, glabrous; tube 1–1.6 cm long, 1.5–2 cm in diameter, suberect or gently curved; lobes 2.8–4.2 cm long, 4–7 mm wide, spreading. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column included or slightly exserted, suberect or gently curved; anthers dark purple, connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, the tube 1.2–1.6 cm long, 5–5.5 mm in diameter, glabrous or sparsely pubescent along sutures; filaments 3.4–4.2 cm long, connate above, free from the corolla, dark purple, glabrous. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-carpellate, 2-loculed; ovule placentation axile, placentae large; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries 2–3 cm long; 2–3 cm in diameter; orange; subglobose. Seeds numerous; tiny; dark brown or black; minutely foveate–reticulate; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 14*.

Habitat: Montane bogs; rain forests; and cloud forests.

Elevation Range: 915–1460 m.