Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1.5–8 m tall, terrestrial or epiphytic.

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 oblong, elliptic, or oblanceolate, 10–23 cm long, 2–6.5 cm wide. Apex obtuse, acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base cuneate or attenuate. Upper surfaces dark green, glossy; lower surfaces greenish white, dull, glabrous or sparsely pubescent along the midvein; Blades coriaceous. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 1.5–8 cm long, glabrous or rarely pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary, 2–flowered or commonly 1–flowered through abortion, glabrous or rarely pubescent; peduncle 0.4–1.8 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at middle or apex; pedicels 1.2–4.8 (–5.3) cm long, spreading, bibracteolate at or near base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1–2.2 cm long, 1–2 cm in diameter, hemispheric or obconic, glabrous or rarely pubescent. Calyx synsepalous, lobes 0.2–4 cm long, 0.3–1 cm wide, deltate, shallowly triangular, triangular, oblong, or ovate; apex acute, obtuse, rounded, or emarginate; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a hypanthium, hemispheric, obconic, obovoid, turbinate, or rarely oblong, smooth or with 10 longitudinal furrows, rarely muricate or with 10 longitudinal ridges; lobes 5, valvate, either less than 1⁄2 as long as the corolla, distinct or rarely connate at base, persistent, triangular or deltate, rarely oblong or ovate, firm, green, or as long as the corolla (rarely only ⅔ as long), connate for 1/5–⅘ their length, deciduous, mimicking the corolla in shape, texture, and color. Corolla 5.5–8 (–9) cm long, bilabiate, green externally, greenish white or magenta internally, glabrous or rarely pubescent; tube 2.2–3.6 cm long, 0.8–2 cm in diameter, suberect or curved; lobes 5, thick, fleshy, the dorsal two 3–5.3 (–6.1) cm long, 3–7 mm wide, erect or suberect, acuminate, acute, obtuse, or rounded at apex, the ventral three forming a down curved trifid lip 2.4–4 cm long, 0.4–1.2 cm wide, the distal free portions 0.5–1.5 mm long. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column included, curved; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, dark purple, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, the tube 1.3–2.1 cm long, 4.5–7 mm in diameter, glabrous or pubescent along the sutures; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 4.2–6.4 cm long, magenta, 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 2.5–4 cm long; 2.5–4 cm in diameter; orange; subglobose or obovoid; pericarp thick; leathery; placentae juicy or spongy; apex truncate; crowned with a low circular rim and base of style. 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: Mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 520–1,825 m.