Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1–6 m tall, terrestrial or rarely 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 oblanceolate, 4–15 cm long, 1.5–4.5 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base cuneate or attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or pubescent along the veins; chartaceous, dull; upper surfaces green; lower surfaces pale green. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 0.2–2.8 (–3.7) cm long, glabrous or rarely pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2(–5)–flowered, glabrous or rarely pubescent; peduncle (1–) 3–11 cm long, pendent, bibracteate at or near apex; pedicels 1.6–7 cm long, pendent, bibracteolate near base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 0.7–1.8 cm long, 0.9–1.5 (–1.9) cm in diameter, turbinate or obovoid, 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 5.1–8.5 cm long, tubular, green, purple, maroon, or rose, often longitudinally striped, the calyx lobes rarely only ⅔ as long as corolla, glabrous; tube 2.8–5.5 cm long, 0.6–2 cm in diameter, curved or arcuate; lobes 0.9–2.9 cm long, 2–7 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, 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, the tube 1–1.4 cm long, 2.5–3.5 mm in diameter, glabrous; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 4.8–7 (–8.4) 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 1.6–2.6 cm long; 1–2 cm in diameter; orange; obovoid or 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*.

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest and margins of bogs.

Elevation Range: 530–1,975 m.