Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect to spreading shrubs, young growth yellowish brown pilose, soon glabrate.

Stems: Stems 0.5–2.2 m long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to broadly elliptic or occasionally suborbicular, blades 3–7.5 cm long, 1.6–4.5 cm wide. Apex short-acuminate to obtuse, with a minute mucro or occasionally emarginate. Base rounded to broadly cuneate, petioles 0.8–5(–7) cm long. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces sparsely appressed pilose, more densely so along veins, or only along veins; blades chartaceous. Margins entire. Pinnately veined, with 3–5 conspicuous veins spreading from base. Petiolate. Stipules linear–lanceolate, 1–4 mm long, densely yellowish brown pilose, somewhat persistent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary cymes 20–80 mm long; peduncles 30–60 mm long, bracts linear-lanceolate to narrowly deltate, ca. 1–1.5 mm long. Flowers possibly unisexual (and the plants apparently monoecious); pedicels 1–12 mm long. Calyx of 5 sepals, Sepals white, 1.5–3 mm long. Corolla of 5 petals, white, 1.2–1.8 mm long, each one enclosing a stamen. Stamens 5, opposite the petals; filaments distinct, adnate to base of petals. Ovary inferior, 3(4)-celled, apparently sometimes abortive; ovules 1 per cell, basal and erect, anatropous; style 3– lobed.

Fruit: Fruit 9–16 mm long; glabrate to sparsely puberulent; 2–winged or occasionally 3–winged; the wings extending throughout the fruit; but somewhat wider toward apex; ca. (3–)4–5 mm wide; apex and base notched. Seeds brown; glossy; ellipsoid; 5–7 mm long.

Ploidy: 2n = 46*

Habitat:

Elevation Range: ca. 810 m.