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, elliptic, or oblanceolate, 6–20 cm long, 1.5–5.4 cm wide. Apex rounded, obtuse, acute, or acuminate. Base cuneate or attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or pubescent; lamina coriaceous; upper surfaces dark green, glossy; lower surfaces very pale green, dull. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 1.2–11.5 cm long, glabrous or pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2(–3)–flowered, glabrous or pubescent; peduncle 0.4–4.5 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at middle or apex; pedicels 1–4.5 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at or near base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 0.8–1.8 cm long, 0.9–1.4 cm in diameter, hemispheric or obconic, glabrous. Calyx synsepalous; 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. Perianth 5–6.5 cm long, tubular, green (sometimes tinged purple) externally, white or cream within, glabrous or rarely pubescent, the apex rounded, obtuse, or acuminate in bud; tube 2.9–5.7 cm long, 0.9–1.6 cm in diameter, arcuate; lobes 1.2–2.5 cm long, 3–5 mm wide, suberect or slightly spreading. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column included or slightly exserted, curved or arcuate; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, white, greenish white, or purple, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, otherwise glabrous, or sometimes pubescent along the sutures, rarely so on the surfaces, the tube 1.3–1.7 cm long, 3–5 mm in diameter, glabrous or sparsely pubescent; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 3.7–6.6 cm long, white, greenish white, or magenta, 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 1.7–3 cm long; 1.8–3 cm in diameter; orange; 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: 2n = 14*; the count of 2n = 22 (Carlquist 1956) is probably an error (Lammers 1988a).

Habitat: Mesic valleys to wet forest.

Elevation Range: 400–1,200 m.