Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs, 2–4 m tall (fide Hillebrand).

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, 10–12.5 cm long, 2.5–3.2 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base cuneate. Surfaces glabrous; blades chartaceous, dull. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 4–7.5 cm long, glabrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 7–10–flowered, glabrous; peduncle 1–1.8 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at apex; pedicels 1–1.8 cm long, spreading, bibracteolate at base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 7–8 mm long, 7–8 mm in diameter, obconic, glabrous. Perianth 2.4–3.2 cm long, purple (fide Hillebrand), glabrous; tube 1.4–1.6 cm long, 5–6 mm in diameter, suberect; lobes 1.2–1.6 cm long, 2–3 mm wide. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column exserted, suberect; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, purple (fide Hillebrand), 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 7–8 mm long, 2.5–3 mm in diameter, glabrous; filaments 2.5–2.8 cm long, connate above, free from the corolla, purple, magenta, or white, 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 unknown. 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:

Elevation Range: