Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs, 1.2–5 m tall, terrestrial.

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 oblanceolate or elliptic, 8–11 cm long, 2.8–3.5 cm wide. Apex acute. Base attenuate or cuneate. Lower surfaces densely pubescent. Margins callose crenulate, rarely callose–serrulate. Petioles 1.2–2.5 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Perianth 3.6–4.8 cm long, rose; tube 2–3.2 cm long, 5–8 mm in diameter; lobes 1–2 cm long, 2–3.5 mm wide. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column slightly exserted, curved or arcuate; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, 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 1–1.3 cm long, 2.5–3 mm in diameter, glabrous; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 3.5–4.6 cm long, purple 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 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: Montane cloud forests.

Elevation Range: 1,675–2,100 m.