Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs, 1.2–5 m tall, terrestrial.

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, elliptic, or broadly elliptic, 5–10 cm long, 1.8–4.5 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base attenuate, cuneate, or obtuse. Upper surfaces glabrous or sparsely pubescent; lower surfaces pubescent or densely pubescent; lamina chartaceous, dull; upper surfaces dark green often tinged purple; lower surfaces pale green. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 0.5–2.5 cm long, pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2(–5)–flowered, pubescent; peduncle 0.4–1.8 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at or near apex; pedicels 1.2–2.8 cm long, spreading, bibracteolate at base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 0.8–1.4 cm long, 0.5–1 cm in diameter, turbinate or obovoid, glabrous or pubescent. 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 1/5–4/5 their length, deciduous, mimicking the corolla in shape, texture, and color. Perianth 3.6–5.5 cm long, tubular, rose or white tinged green, glabrous; tube 2–3.8 cm long, 0.5–1 cm in diameter, curved or arcuate; lobes 1–2 cm long, 2–4 mm wide, spreading slightly. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column slightly exserted, curved or arcuate; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, 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, or sometimes pubescent along the sutures, rarely so on the surfaces, the tube 1–1.3 cm long, 2.5–3 mm in diameter, glabrous; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 3.5–5.5 cm long, purple or magenta, 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 unknown. 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 forests.

Elevation Range: 610–2100 m.