Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs to small trees.

Stems: Bark pale, fissured, flaky, vegetative buds narrow, pointed, branchlets slender, spreading.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades lanceolate, 2–4.5 cm long, 0.5–1.5 cm wide. Apex acute. Base cuneate to attenuate. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Midrib often red. Petioles 6–10 mm long, 1–1.5 mm wide, often at right angles or more to the stems, petioles often red. Stipules vestigial or absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences of 3–4 pairs of cymules, glabrous or appressed short–pubescent, peduncles slender, often at right angles to the axis, ca. 7 mm long and 0.7 mm wide, pedicels ca. 4 mm long and 0.5 mm wide, bracts ovate, ca. 4 mm long and 2 mm wide, caducous. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Hypanthium well–developed above ovary, 2.5–3 mm high, ca. 4 mm wide; fruiting hypanthium 5–6 mm long and wide, with prominent veins, glabrous. Sepals distinct, triangular, ca. 1.5 mm long and 2 mm wide, imbricate. Petals distinct, obovate, ca. 3 mm long and 2 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 2–2.5 cm long, simple; stigma small.

Fruit: Capsules enclosed by hypanthium; exserted.

Ploidy: 2n = 22

Habitat: Steep slopes.

Elevation Range: 125–700 m.