Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, 3–4 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 narrowly elliptic or rarely oblanceolate, 15–28 cm long, 2.5–5 cm wide. Apex acute or acuminate. Base attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrous or sparsely pubescent; lower surfaces pubescent, lamina chartaceous, dull; upper surfaces green; lower surfaces pale green. Margins callose–serrulate. Petioles 1.5–3.5 cm long, winged, pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2(–5)–flowered, pubescent; peduncle 2.8–6 cm long, deflexed, bibracteate at apex; pedicels 0.8–2 cm long, abruptly ascending, bibracteolate at or near base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1–1.8 cm long, 0.8–1.2 cm in diameter, obconic or obovoid, pubescent. Calyx lobes 3–5 mm long, 1–2 mm wide, triangular; apex acute or acuminate. Corolla 4–4.5 cm long, bilabiate, white sometimes tinged green, pubescent; tube 2–2.6 cm long, 5–8 mm in diameter, curved; lobes 1.7–2.4 cm long, 2–3 mm wide, spreading. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, Staminal column somewhat exserted, suberect; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, white, 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 1.3–1.4 cm long, 3–4 mm in diameter, glabrous; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 3–3.6 cm long, white, 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 1.8–2.8 cm long; 1.5–2.4 cm in diameter; orange; obovoid or obpyriform. 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: Subalpine forests.

Elevation Range: 1,585–2,130 m.