Shrub, or tree to 7 m tall, sometimes subscandent; stems to 2.5 cm in diameter; branches slender and weak, obtusely tetragonal or subterete, greyish-scurfy, minutely puberulent or glabrous with scattered elevated lenticels; branchlets This content downloaded from 192.104.39.2 on Thu, 9 May 2013 15:26:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions1973] MOLDENKE-FLORA OF PANAMA (Family 168. Verbenaceae) 115 slender, coarsely angular or subterete, slightly compressed at the nodes, brownish, minutely puberulent to pulverulent or glabrous. Leaves opposite; very thin-membranous and fragile when dry, oblong to elliptic, 8-18 cm long and 2-7.5 cm wide, mostly acuminate or abruptly acute (rarely obtuse), basally acuminate, entire or coarsely angulate-dentate above the middle, dark-green above, pale beneath, minutely puberulent on both surfaces especially along the midrib and veins, sometimes somewhat velvety to touch, in age becoming glabrous and shiny above and merely densely punctate beneath, marked with black glandular disks along the midrib beneath, the venation extremely delicate; petioles slender and very weak, 5-7 mm long, minutely puberulent or glabrate. Inflorescences axillary cymes and terminal panicles; the cymes axillary but mostly only toward the tips of the branchlets, bi-or trifid, ca. 1/3 as long as the subtending leaves, extremely weak and tenuous, loose and spreading, often drooping, loosely few-flowered; the panicle usually small, only 5-6 cm long and 4-6 cm wide, the branches few, slender, usually few-flowered, the sympodia few, short, slender, puberulent; peduncles slender or filiform, 1.2-5 cm long, minutely puberulent or pulverulent; pedicels filiform, weak, 2-9 mm long, puberulent; bractlets few, linear-lanceolate to subulate, 1-12 mm long, puberulent; prophylls minute. Flowers with the calyx campanulate or broadly cyathiform, 2.4-4 mm long and 3-4.2 mm wide, basally acute and attenuate into the pedicel, lax around the corolla-tube, minutely puberulent, subtruncate, 4-mucronulate or sinuate; corolla yellow or white, glabrous, infundibular or hypocrateriform, the tube narrow-cylindric, gradually ampliate above, 3-6 mm long, the lobes 4, linear-lanceolate or oblong to ovate-lingulate, 4-6 mm long and 2-3 mm wide, obtuse; stamens 4, inserted ca. 1 mm below the mouth of the corolla-tube, subincluded in the pistillate flowers or long-exserted in the staminate, the filaments 1-19 mm long, puberulent or glabrous; pistil included in the staminate flowers or exserted in the pistillate, the style 1.2-7.5 mm long, glabrous, the stigma branches divaricate, 1.8-2.6 mm long, the ovary globose or obovate, ca. 1.3 mm long and 1 mm wide, basally acute, flattened above, 4-lobed and 4-sulcate, glabrous, 4-celled.. Fruit subglobose or oblong, 8-9 mm long, ca. 8 mm wide, yellow or orange, apically flattened and somewhat depressed, strongly and conspicuously lobed, wrinkled in drying, 1-4 seeded; fruiting-calyx cupuliform, greatly enlarged and indurated, ca. 6 mm long and 9 mm wide, subentire to deeply lobed or irregularly split.
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