Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1.5–6.5 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 oblong, elliptic, or oblanceolate, 7–22 cm long, 2–5 cm wide. Apex acuminate, acute, obtuse, or cuspidate. Base cuneate or attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or pubescent along the veins; lamina chartaceous, dull; upper surfaces green; lower surfaces light green. Margins callose crenulate, rarely callose–serrulate. Petioles 1–6 cm long, glabrous or pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2(–4)–flowered or sometimes 1–flowered by abortion, glabrous or pubescent; peduncle 2.5–5 cm long; pedicels 2–4 cm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1–1.5 cm long, 1–1.5 cm in diameter, hemispheric or obconic, glabrous or pubescent. Calyx synsepalous; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a hypanthium, hemispheric, obconic, obovoid, turbinate or rarely oblong, smooth with or with 10 longitudinal furrows, rarely muricate or with 10 longitudinal ridges; lobes 5, valvate, 0.2–1 cm long, 0.5–3 mm wide, narrowly triangular or triangular, distinct or connate at base, deciduous, mimicking the corolla in shape, texture, and color; apex acute or acuminate. Corolla 4–5 cm long, bilabiate, green, purple, or white, glabrous or pubescent; tube 2–2.5 cm long, 0.6–1.1 cm in diameter, suberect or curved; lobes 2–3 cm long, spreading. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, exserted, suberect or gently curved; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, white or light purple, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, otherwise glabrous, the tube 1.4–1.8 cm long, 3–5 mm in diameter; filaments connate above, free from the corolla; filaments 3.7–4.8 cm long, white or light 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 2–3.6 cm long; 2–3.6 cm in diameter; orange or yellow; subglobose; pericarp thick; leathery; placentae juicy or spongy; apex truncate; crowned with a low circular rim and base of style. Seeds numerous; tiny; dark brown or black; minutely foveate–reticulate; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Montane rain forests.

Elevation Range: 670–1525 m.