Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 2–7 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 or elliptic, 5–17 cm long, 1.5–7 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base cuneate or obtuse. Surfaces glabrous; upper surfaces dark green, glossy; lower surfaces pale green, dull; blade coriaceous. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 1.5–8 cm long, glabrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary, 2–flowered or often 1–flowered by abortion, glabrous or rarely pubescent; peduncle 0.8–3 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at apex; pedicels 0.5–3 cm long, ascending, equalling the peduncle, bibracteolate at or near base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 0.9–1.5 cm long, 1–1.1 cm in diameter, hemispheric or obconic, glabrous or rarely pubescent. Calyx synsepalous, lobes 2–4 mm long, 2–4 mm wide, deltate or shallowly triangular, distinct; 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; apex acute or acuminate. Corolla 6–7 cm long, unilabiate, green externally, sometimes suffused with purple, pale greenish white or cream within, glabrous or pubescent; tube 4.2–5.8 cm long, 5–8 mm in diameter, arcuate, of equal width from base to middle; lobes 1.2–1.8 cm long, 2–4 mm wide, deflexed. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column strongly exserted, erect or suberect; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, cream, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, the tube 1.4–1.5 cm long, 3.5–4.5 mm in diameter, glabrous or minutely pubescent; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 4.8–5.5 cm long, greenish white or cream, 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 2.5–3.5 cm long; 2.5–3.5 cm in diameter; orange or yellow; subglobose. 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: Montane rain forests.

Elevation Range: 365–1400 m.