Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1.5–8 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, 14–20 cm long, 4–6.5 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate, rarely obtuse or rounded. Base cuneate or attenuate, rarely obtuse or rounded. Lower surfaces glabrous or sparingly pubescent on the midvein. Margins callose crenulate, rarely callose–serrulate. Petioles 3–6 cm long, glabrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary, subumbellately racemose, 2(–10)–flowered, sometimes 1 flowered by abortion, glabrous or pubescent, rarely muricate; peduncle 0.6–1.4 cm long; pedicels 2–4 cm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1.3–1.8 cm long, 1–1.8 cm in diameter, glabrous. Calyx synsepalous, lobes 1.8–4 cm long, triangular, oblong, or ovate; apex acute, obtuse, or rounded; 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. Corolla 7–8 cm long, bilabiate, green externally, greenish white or magenta internally, glabrous; tube 2.4–3 cm long, 1–1.5 cm in diameter; lobes 5, dorsal lobes 4–4.7 cm long, 5–7 mm wide; trifid lip 3–3.2 cm long, 0.9–1 cm wide. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column included, curved; 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 1.8–2 cm long, 5–6 mm in diameter, glabrous or pubescent; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 5.2–5.7 cm long, 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 2.5–4 cm long; 2.5–4 cm in diameter; orange; subglobose or obovoid; 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:

Habitat: Montane rain forests.

Elevation Range: 550–1325 m.