Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect palmoid shrubs 1–3 m tall.

Stems: Main stem 1–2 cm in diameter, few–branched, branches ascending, leafy toward apex, new growth hirtellous, wood somewhat brittle, with a pepsin-like odor when freshly broken.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades narrowly oblong to very narrowly elliptic or subspatulate, usually 20–42 cm long, 4–12 cm wide. Apex bluntly acute to subacuminate or rounded. Base truncate, obtuse, or rarely subcordate. Surfaces glabrate. Margins entire. Lateral veins numerous, almost perpendicular to midrib, connected by a deeply arched vein, midrib sulcate on upper surface. Petioles 3–18 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 3–9 in axillary cymes, hirtellous, sometimes 2–3 cymes clustered in fascicles up to 2 cm long, in the leaf axils or below the leaves, peduncles 1–3 mm long, pedicels 4–9 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx of 4 sepals, in imbricated pairs, broadly ovate, ca. 3 mm long and 5 mm wide, sparsely puberulent. Corolla of 4 petals, white or cream, slightly imbricate, oblong, 12–13 mm long, ca. 5 mm wide, glabrous. Stamens 8; filaments white, nearly completely connate into a staminal tube; anthers subsessile, longer ones ca. 2.5 mm long, shorter ones ca. 2 mm long, elongate, base subhastate, dithecal. Ovary superior, 4-carpellate, 4-lobed, carpels connate in lower ½, subconical and narrowed into a short style, placentation axile; ovules 5–8 per carpel, pendulous on short, broad funiculi; style columnar; stigmas linear, erect, connate, slightly thickened apically.

Fruit: Fruit cruciate; ca. 20–25 mm in diameter (measured between carpel apices); glabrous; carpels erect to somewhat spreading in fruit; ca. 12–17 mm long; apex with a long slender beak 5–10 mm long. Seeds 8 per carpel; embryo with thin; broad; rounded cotyledons; hypocotyl very short; embedded in white endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 36*

Habitat: Mesic forest and mesic valleys.

Elevation Range: 760–1,220 m.