Coarse, erect herbs or shrubs to 2.5 m tall, glabrate; stems stout, drying strongly angled, hollow, if puberulent soon glabrescent. Leaves opposite, appear-ing connate perfoliate but actually not so, lanceolate, to 20 cm long, ca. 3 cm wide, apically acute, basally narrowed and auriculate with an indistinct petiolar region, the margin serrate with numerous prominent but fine teeth, sometimes ciliolate, the midvein prominent, plane or impressed above, elevated beneath, lateral veins numerous, arcuate ascending, drying reticulate beneath, glabrate or with some short scattered hairs, copiously glandular dotted beneath on emerging; petiolar area broadly winged, mostly edentate. Inflorescences numerous short, several flowered contracted cymes to 4 cm long and 4 cm broad, the peduncles mostly 1-2 cm long, drying compressed, ciliolate, the bracts narrowly deltoid or lanceolate, costate, ca. 4 mm long, situated at the base of the pedicels and the peduncle branches. Flowers with the calyx 7-8 mm long, tubular campanu-late, 5-lobed, the lobes 3-4 mm long, acute to linear, outcurving, extending down-wards as prominent calyx costas, glabrous, the calyx tube enervate; corolla white, drying yellow, tubular to campanulate, ca. 1.5 mm long, glabrous outside or with minute glandular trichomes near the top of the tube, exserted ca. 10 mm from
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the calyx, 4-lobed, the lobes rotund, subentire, subequal, 3-4 mm long, the sinuses conspicuously infolded, the infolded portion densely bearded with white hairs; stamens 4, alike, the-anthers free, alike, the 2 thecae divaricate and downcurved in a U over the filament apex, the filaments glabrous, slender, not apically expanded except as a pedicel-like connective; style shorter than the anthers, glabrous, terete; stigmas compressed, elliptical, apically acute, the ovary smooth, glabrous, eglandular, drying sulcate. Fruit a conspicuous, white, fleshy berry, ellipsoidal or ovoid, 10-18 mm long, septally sulcate, loosely enveloped by the slightly accrescent calyx until maturity, the calyx then dehiscing longitudinally to the base at one or more points, the style sometimes persistent, 4-5 mm long; seeds reddish brown, ca. 0.5 mm long, ellipsoidal, sometimes somewhat com-pressed, weakly pitted reticulate in indistinct longitudinal lines; placenta drying dark, massive, the septum drying light, indurate.
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