Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect shrubs 1.5–3 m tall.

Stems: Branches pubescent with erect and ± appressed hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades elliptic, elliptic–ovate, or ovate, 7–15 cm long, 3–5.5 cm wide. Apex long-acuminate or acute. Base cuneate to rounded. Upper surfaces sparsely silky pubescent, the hairs somewhat spreading or appressed, 0.2–0.4 mm long; lower surfaces with hairs primarily somewhat spreading; grayish to greenish on lower surface, thin, with disciform cystoliths. Margins coarsely dentate above the middle. Palmately 3-veined from base. Petioles 0.8–3 cm long, pubescent with appressed and spreading hairs. Stipules small, intrapetiolar.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary clusters, staminate flowers on pedicels 0–1 mm long; pistillate flowers sessile. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of staminate flowers silky pubescent, the hairs ascending, lobes 4, boat-shaped, the lobes 2–3.5 mm long, coherent in bud, separating at anthesis, pilose; pistillate Calyx conspicuously angled, silky pubescent, the hairs ascending to erect, also with some short, erect, uncinate hairs, apex 4-toothed, the teeth acuminate to long–acuminate. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 4 in staminate flowers, staminal filaments folded elastically in bud, reflexed when pollen is shed, strap–shaped, 2–5 mm long; anthers reniform, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Pollen white. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), pseudomonomerous, 1-celled; ovule 1, placentation basal; style 1; stigma 2–8 mm long, lacking receptive hairs on 1 surface. Staminate flower ovary vestigial and sterile.

Fruit: Achenes 1.5–2 mm long; angled; surrounded by the conspicuously angled and ridged; fleshy calyx; apical portion conical; not separated from basal portion by a constriction. Seeds 1 per achene; ovoid.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Diverse mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 450–825 m.