Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Slender or shrubby trees up to 4.5(–6) m tall, new growth pale brown tomentose.

Stems: Stems 0.5–5 mm in diameter near apex, internodes 1.6–14 mm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades nearly elliptic or suborbicular, 5–18 cm long, 3–13 cm wide. Apex acute to obtuse, rarely acuminate. Base usually acute. Surfaces glabrous or pubescent; blades somewhat coriaceous. Margins entire and usually without developed marginal ribs. Lateral veins 10–20 pairs. Petioles 1–7 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in single axillary panicles, these 1–2 branched, reddish brown pubescent or glabrous. Panicles 12–40 cm long, simple or compound, with 5–15 primary branches. Each panicle branch subtended by 1 bract. Gynodioecious (with bisexual (perfect)–flowered plants and female plants in each population). flowers several to numerous per branch, internodes between individual flowers 1–5 mm long. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, imbricate, subequal; 1.5–2.25 mm long discernibly 3–7-veined. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens and staminodes 5; filaments connate at base to form a short, membranous tube with short, rounded flaps of tissue alternating with the filaments; anthers exserted at anthesis. Ovary superior, globose or urceolate, 1.5–2 mm long; style absent or very short; stigmas 2, straight or recurved, nearly as long as the ovary, with glands on the inner surface.

Fruit: Indehiscent utricle. Seeds black and shiny; lenticular ca. 1.5 mm long at maturity.

Ploidy: 2n = 52*

Habitat: Occurring in wet and mesic forest.

Elevation Range: (180–)300–1,160 m.