Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1.5–5 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 elliptic or broadly elliptic, 12–19 cm long, 4–7 cm wide. Apex acuminate, acute, or obtuse. Base cuneate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or pubescent, blades chartaceous, dull; upper surfaces green; lower surfaces light green. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 3–7 cm long, pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary, subumbellately racemose, 2(–4)–flowered, pubescent; peduncle 1–1.7 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at middle or apex; pedicels 1–1.2 cm long, spreading, bibracteolate at middle. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1–1.7 cm long, 0.8–1.2 cm in diameter, obovoid, turbinate, or hemispheric, glabrous or pubescent. 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 3.5–4.5 cm long, rotate, greenish externally, purple or dark purple within, glabrous or pubescent; tube 1–1.8 cm long, 0.7–1 cm in diameter, erect or suberect; lobes 5, valvate, 1.8–3.4 cm long, 1.2–2.5 mm wide, recurved. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, exserted, erect or suberect; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, dark purple, 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 1.3 cm long, 3–4 mm in diameter, glabrous or sparsely pubescent; filaments 2.5–3.3 cm long, connate above, free from the corolla, purple or dark purple, 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 1.5–3 cm long; 1.5–3 cm in diameter; orange; subglobose; pericarp thick; leathery; placentae juicy or spongy; apex truncate; crowned with a low circular rim and base of style. 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*.

Habitat: Montane rain forests.

Elevation Range: 885–1460 m.