Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees 7–10 m tall, glabrous.

Stems: Branchlets with aggregate nodes as in P. umbellifera, but with perhaps fewer internodes compressed together, stems appearing fistulous, weakly quadrangular, internodes 2–9 cm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Whorled, 3–8 at a node. Blades spatulate–obovate, blades up to 30 cm long and 9.5 cm wide. Apex rounded to abruptly short-acuminate. Base gradually attenuate-cuneate. Margins entire to sinuate. Veins not prominent, lateral veins 8–10 pairs, branching once or twice and anastomosing toward margins, tertiary and higher order venation obscure. Petioles 1–2 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Staminate flowers pedicellate to sessile, in slender cymes up to 20 cm long, short–pilose throughout, peduncles up to 15 cm long, 3 times umbellately branched, 3–5 rays per umbel, each up to 6 cm long, with a very small, pubescent; pistillate flowers with pedicels 1–3 mm long, elongating up to 7 mm long in fruit, in cymes 5–6 cm long at anthesis, up to 20 cm long and 15 cm in diameter and very diffuse in fruit, on very short branchlets, with several arising from 1 aggregate node, peduncles slender, 4 cm long, elongating up to 11 cm long in fruit, minutely puberulent, with 2–4 short branches, these ending in irregular umbellules of 4–7 flowers, sometimes branching again, each ramification arising from a miniature aggregate node with scars of bracts and branchlets or pedicels. Flowers unisexual, probably strongly fragrant. Calyx of staminate flowers pointed in bud, cylindrical–campanulate to funnelform–campanulate at anthesis, tube turbinate, 2.5 mm long, ribbed, lobes 4, white, ovate, equalling tube, spreading to recurved, slightly puberulent externally, glabrous within, margins papillose, slightly thickened, crispate when dry, apex subacute. Calyx of pistillate flowers tubular or slightly prismatic at anthesis, tube 4–5 mm long, ± slightly thicker at base, very minutely puberulent, lobes 4, thick, ovate, somewhat spreading, ca. 1.5– 1.7 mm long, glabrous within, margins papillate–puberulent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flowers 6–9, exserted to twice length of lobes; filaments white; anthers orbicular; pistillate flowers staminodia 5–6, sterile anthers oblong, 0.5 mm long, included in perianth or nearly so. Ovary superior. Staminate flowers pistillode exserted ca. 2 mm; stigma somewhat enlarged, recurved or hooked, apex papillate–puberulent, at least on concave part of apex; pistillate flowers style glabrous, slightly exserted from perianth tube; stigma many-branched, the branches capillary and somewhat plumose.

Fruit: Anthocarps (not mature) slightly 4–angled; angles very glutinous; ca. 4 cm long; basal half slightly swollen; distal half cylindrical; tapering to a sterile portion; forming a rostrum; lobes thick; indurate; somewhat spreading; inner edge prolonged slightly beyond the thickened margins. Seeds 1 per fruit; closely enclosed by the thin ovary wall.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: 230–650 m.