Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small, many-branched shrubs.

Stems: Stems striate, to ca. 1–2 dm long, glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades linear, 4–8 cm long, ca. 0.5–1.2 cm wide. Blades chartaceous. Margins slightly revolute. Veins other than midrib obscure. petioles 0 – 0.5 cm long, connate into a sheath. Stipules reduced to a carinate, linear–subulate mucro 2–5 mm long, adnate to petiole bases.

Flowers: Flowers 3(–7) in cymes, these hirtellous throughout or glabrous, pedicels ca. 8–15 mm long, those of the central flower longest, bracts subtending inflorescence linear, ca. 1–1.5 cm long; hypanthium turbinate, ca. 1.5 mm long. Flowers insect-pollinated, apparently bisexual (perfect) or pistillate. Calyx 4–5 lobed, lobes linear–deltate, 4–6 mm long, 1.5–2 mm wide, apparently not enlarging in fruit. Corolla white, fleshy, salverform, the tube ca. 8–9 mm long, the limb not strongly quadrangular in bud, but apex depressed; 4-5-lobed, the lobes ca. 2 mm long at anthesis, strongly inflexed in bud; nectary disc present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted on corolla tube midway or near throat; anthers sessile or on short filaments; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior or partly so, 2(-4)-locular; ovules few to numerous on fleshy placentas near middle of septum; styles as many as carpels, cylindrical to filiform, terminal, slender; stigma bilobed or subcapitate, included or exserted.

Fruit: Capsules turbinate–globose; 3–3.5 mm long; 3.5–4 mm in diameter; dehiscing loculicidally across disk; tardily slightly further; pyrenes tardily dehiscing septicidally; endocarp thinly sclerified; disk conical to slightly beaked. Seeds reddish brown; cuneiform; slightly compressed; irregularly angled; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Probably in lowland habitats.

Elevation Range: