Shrub or slender tree 1-5 m tall; branches obtusely tetragonal or subterete, minutely puberulent, glabrescent; branchlets obtusely tetragonal, ampliate and compressed at the nodes, softly puberulent or glabrescent; bark light-gray; leaf-scars borne on oblique sterigmata. Leaves opposite, spreading, variable, usually membranous, sometimes chartaceous, entire, oblong-lanceolate to oblong, 8-25 cm long, 3-10 cm wide, acuminate or coarctate-attenuate into a narrow and abrupt point, basally narrowed and acute to obtuse or rounded, bright-green and shiny above, pale beneath, usually glabrous and smooth on both surfaces, sometimes faintly puberulent or glandular-punctate; petioles slender, weak, 5-14 mm long, minutely puberulent. Inflorescences axillary cymes and terminal panicles; the cymes solitary, opposite, corymbose or sometimes subcomposite, spreading, many-flowered, more or less trichotomous, half as long or equaling the subtending leaves, often diminishing upwards; the panicles thyrsoid, often pyramidal, to 17 cm long and 13 cm wide, leafy, the sympodia fastigiate, stout, puberulent or glabrate; peduncles 2.5-7.5 cm long, puberulent; pedicels 2-4 mm long, minutely puberulent, often 2-bracteolate below the middle, not much thickened in fruit; bractlets and prophylls linear or subulate, 1-2 mm long, puberulent. Flowers inodorous; the calyx narrow-campanulate or turbinate-infundibular, widening from an acute base to a cupuliform limb, 2-3 mm long and 1.5-3 mm wide, lax around the corolla-tube, minutely puberulent or glabrous, truncate, subentire or 4-mucronulate; corolla white or pale-yellow, hypocrateriform, the tube narrow-cylindric, 2-6 mm long, ampliate above, the lobes usually 4, ovate-lingulate, 2.3-6.5 mm long and 1.7-3.7 mm wide, obtuse, often minutely puberulent outside; stamens usually 4, inserted 1-3 mm below the mouth of the corolla-tube, exserted in the staminate flowers or included in the pistillate, the filaments 0.6-7.2 mm long, glabrous; pistil included in the staminate flowers or exserted in the pistillate, the style 3-9 mm long, glabrous, the stigma branches 1-4 mm long, often widely divergent in the pistillate flowers, the ovary subglobose, 1-1.5 mm long and wide, flattened above, 4-sulcate, glabrous, 4-celled. Fruit subglobose or ovoid, 5-13 mm long and 8-10 mm wide, yellow or red, umbilicate at both ends with little soft pulp, blackening and becoming deeply 4-lobed and roughened in drying, hardly invested at the base by the fruiting-calyx, 4-seeded; fruiting-calyx greatly enlarged 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) 113 and indurated, shallowly cupuliform or patelliform, lax and spreading, ca. 6 mm wide, irregularly lobed with large rounded lobes, often veiny, scarious-margined.
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