Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs 0.2–0.9 m tall, young bark reddish brown, older bark dark gray and glaucous.

Stems: Stems erect, many-branched, young branch ends villous but glabrate with age except the pilose nodes, flowering branches 1–2 mm in diameter.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, distichous. Blades ovate to rarely orbicular, 11–25 mm long, 8–15 mm wide. Apex rounded, retuse. Base cordate, oblique. Lower surfaces glabrous or villous along the midvein and pilose at basal margin; glaucous. Margins entire. Petioles 0.5–1 mm long, pilose. Stipules rounded–triangular, 0.5–1 mm long, villous, occasionally erose.

Flowers: Flowers in cyathia solitary in the leaf axils or rarely terminal, peduncles 0–0.5 mm long, glabrous. involucre campanulate, 1–1.5 mm high, 1.5–2 mm wide, glabrous to villous beneath the glands, glands 4, usually glabrous. Flowers unisexual and highly reduced. Pistillate flowers solitary, on a gynophore; staminate flowers in 5 groups or cymules, each with 1 to several flowers. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Male flower reduced to a single stamen, with an articulation at junction of pedicel and filament, subtended by slender bracteoles. Ovary superior; styles bifid ⅓ their length, 0.5–1 mm long.

Fruit: Capsules shape and size unknown; glabrous; gynophores recurved; exserted ca.1.2 mm from involucre; pubescent. Seeds unknown.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Arid volcanic cliffs.

Elevation Range: ca. 250 m.