Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small shrubs or (in var. longibracteata) robust perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems hollow, erect or ascending, ca. 0.2–25 dm long, often branched, young internodes ± woolly with reddish brown hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Tufted near the tips of the stems. Blades narrowly oblong–lanceolate to narrowly elliptic or sometimes elliptic, 6–30 cm long, 1.5–5 cm wide, blades undifferentiated from petioles. Apex acute to acuminate. Base slightly narrowed at base and sessile, or gradually attenuate to a winged petiole. Surfaces glabrous or lower surfaces sometimes appressed pilose; thick, coriaceous. Margins minutely and remotely denticulate or entire. (3–)5–9-veined, the veins usually converging toward base. Petioles up to 5 cm long, winged. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in scapes usually several, 10–50 cm long, spikes (7–)11–28 cm long, glabrous to sparsely pilose, flowers densely crowded, sometimes spike somewhat interrupted, each flower spreading at nearly 90° angle to the axis or (in var. longibracteata) ascending. bracts lanceolate,1.2–3 mm long, glabrous but sometimes woolly at base, bracteoles absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx of 4 sepals, subequal, distinct, elliptic to elliptic–ovate, 1.8–3.2 mm long, scarious except on midrib, glabrous or ciliate, apex sometimes minutely erose. Corolla salverform, 4-lobed, scarious, persistent in fruit, the tube covering the upper part of the capsule, lobes spreading, 1.5–2 mm long. Stamens 4, alternate with the corolla tubes; filaments adnate to corolla tube; anthers long–exserted, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, with as many cells; ovules (2?)4, placentation axile; style 1, terminal, slender.

Fruit: Capsules narrowly ovoid–ellipsoid; 3–3.8 mm long; enclosed in the persistent calyx; slightly exserted from calyx; dehiscent at a point ⅔ to base or slightly more. Seeds 3–4; black; ellipsoid to oblong–ellipsoid; 1.5–2.1 mm long; the surface apparently with a mucilaginous membrane; with well–developed; firm; translucent endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 12

Habitat: Steep slopes; rock walls; or at bases of waterfalls.

Elevation Range: 480–1,100 m.