Bushy herb or erect shrub, to 3 m tall, woody at the base; branchlets stout, medullose or hollow, obtusely tetragonal, usually deeply sulcate in drying, mi-nutely pulverulent-puberulent or glabrate, the nodes with a broad band of tomen-tose hairs. Leaves opposite, gradually smaller upwards; ovate, 6-40 cni long and 7-38 cm wide, basally cordate (3-7-lobed, the uppermost often entire and basally hastate), the lobes triangular-ovate, acute or apiculate, spreading, variable in size, the margins remotely apiculate-denticulate to crenate-dentate or entire, thin-chartaceous or membranous, bright green and usually shiny above, lighter and dull beneath, pulverulent and minutely strigillose above or glabrate, densely squamulose with orbicular peltate scales and punctate beneath, glabrous between the scales or pubescent only on the venation, the central lobe mostly ovate, the others much smaller and triangular; petioles 1.2-3.5 cm long, minutely pulveru-lent-puberulent or glabrate. Inflorescences axillary cymes in the uppermost leaf-axils and terminal panicles, the cymes long-pedunculate, 9-13 cm long and 3-7 cm wide, many-flowered, panicles often large and thyrsoid, to 39 cm long and 26 cm wide, 1-4 times dichotomous, many-flowered, of 4-16 pairs of cymes, the ultimate divisions often racemiform, the branches divaricate-ascending, con-spicuously bracteate, minutely pulverulent-puberulent or glabrate throughout but often tomentose at the sympodial nodes; peduncles 1.5-12 cm long; pedicels rose-color, almost filiform, 4-15 mm long; foliaceous bracts large, a pair subtending each of the larger pairs of inflorescence-branches, ovate-elliptic, entire or ob-scurely 3-lobed, similar to the leaves; bractlets and prophylls linear, 1-10 mm long, puberulent. Flowers slightly odorous, buds red; calyx red or orange-red, 3-5 mm long, short-pubescent, divided to near the base, the segments erect and spreading, corolla orange-red to scarlet, short-hairy, the tube 1.2-1.6 cm long, the lobes of the limb 7-8 mm long, separated in the throat by white streaks, the posterior pair shorter and narrower than the others; filaments exserted 2.5-3.5 cm. Fruit greenish-blue to black.
More
A herb. It keeps growing from year to year. It grows 1-2 m tall. The branches can be angular and hollow. The leaves are 4-15 cm long by 7-20 cm wide or larger. They are broadly oval and can have 3-7 lobes. The base is heart shaped. There can be teeth along the edge. The flowering shoots are in the axils of leaves or at the ends of branches. There are many flowers in a group 45 cm long. The fruit is fleshy and green to blue turning black when ripe.
Home