Branching shrub or woody vine, sometimes trailing, often high-climbing, 2-8 m tall; stem to 8 cm in diameter; branches elongate, stout; branchlets slender, obtusely tetragonal, glabrous or minutely puberulent toward the tips. Leaves opposite; firmly chartaceous, not blackening or becoming fragile, entire, ovate to elliptic, 7-20 cm long and 2.5-9 cm wide, abruptly attenuate or narrowly acu-minate, basally blunt or rounded, rarely subcordate, dark-green and glabrous above, paler beneath, shiny, and appressed-pubescent on the midrib and larger This content downloaded from 192.104.39.2 on Thu, 9 May 2013 15:26:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions118 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN [VOL. 60 veins beneath, glabrescent and often thinly glandular punctate in age; petioles 5-12 mm long, often much thickened basally, puberulent. Inflorescences axillary cymes and terminal panicles; the cymes ca. 1/3-1/2 as long as the subtending leaves, opposite, solitary, many-flowered, usually quite distinct from the panicle; the panicles corymbose or thyrsoid, about 16 cm long and 11 cm wide, erect, usually naked; peduncles 1-4 cm long, often flattened and ampliate above, minutely puberulent or glabrate; pedicels slender, 4-8 mm long, puberulent. Flowers with the calyx turbinate-infundibular to cupuliform, usually basally acute and ven-tricose or constricted above the ovary, 2-4 mm long and 2.6-4.2 mm wide, firm, lax around the corolla-tube, puberulent or pubescent, apically membranous, distinctly 4-lobed, dilated, the lobes ovate, erect, retuse or mucronulate; corolla yellowish or cream-colored to white, infundibular or hypocrateriform, the tube cylindric, slender, 4-8 mm long, the lobes usually 4, oblong-or elliptic-lingulate, 3-6 mm long and ca. 3.7 mm wide, spreading, obtuse; stamens 4, inserted ca. 3.5 mm below the mouth of the corolla-tube, long-exserted in the staminate flowers or included in the pistillate, the filaments 0.3-7 mm long, glabrous; pistil long-exserted in the pistillate flowers or included in the stamiinate, the style 2-4 mm long, the stigma branches 2-4.5 mm long, the ovary subrotund, dark, ca. 0.9 mm long and wide, flattened above. Fruit subglobose or subtetragonal, 7-10 mm long and wide, flattened at both ends, firm, yellow or orange, 3-or 4-seeded, when immature almost included in the calyx, semi-included when mature, often borne in large clusters 10-15 cm long; fruiting-calyx greatly enlarged and indurated, cupuliform, ca. 5 mm long and 6-10 mm wide, roughened, glabrate, shallowly and irregularly lobed or sometimes deeply split.
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