Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Erect bushy shrub or small tree 2–4.5(–6) m tall.
Stems:
Older stems usually hollow.
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Opposite or ternate, sometimes alternate near uppermost branching nodes.
Blades narrowly to broadly elliptic or ovate, 5–20(–23) cm long, 3–12(–15) cm wide.
Upper surfaces puberulent to glabrate; lower surfaces puberulent, sometimes densely so.
Margins glandular denticulate.
Petioles 2–5(–7) cm long.
Stipules small, usually deciduous.
Flowers:
Flowers in terminal, pendent racemes or few branched panicles.
Perfect, numerous. Pedicels slender, pendent, 5–12(–16) mm long; floral tube red, narrowly funnelform, (25–)30–60(–70) mm long.
Sepals red, lanceolate, 10–20 mm long, valvate.
Petals scarlet, oblong to elliptic, 8–16(–20) mm long.
Stamens 8, in two series, exserted; filaments 8–15 mm long, basifixed, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.
Pollen shed singly.
Ovary inferior, as many cells and carpels as sepals; ovules anatropous; style 1; stigma capitate, globose, or clavate, 4-lobed to subentire.
Fruit:
Berries cylindrical; 10–26 mm long.
Seeds small; endosperm absent.
Ploidy:
2n = 22
Habitat:
Diverse mesic forest.
Elevation Range: