Woody vine or subshrub to 13 m tall; branches slender, grayish or brownish, prominently lenticellate, densely puberulent with mostly subappressed brownish hairs (on older wood) or on young shoots hirsute with spreading hairs, obtusely tetragonal or subterete; leaf-scars large and prominent. Leaves opposite, elliptic, 3-21 cm long, 1.4-10.6 cm wide, apically acute or short-acuminate, rarely obtuse or emarginate, basally acute or obtusely narrowed, rarely rounded or subcordate, the margins entire, rarely sparsely dentate, often more or less undulate or sub-revolute, and densely asperulous on both surfaces, sometimes obscurely short-pubescent along the midrib above and the larger venation beneath, or puberulent, but not densely nor conspicuously so, mostly glabrous or subglabrous; mature petioles stout, 4-13 mm long, densely or sparsely short-pubescent with spreading brownish hairs or puberulent, the axils often with dense fasciculations (actually aborted racemes) of bractlets, densely hirsute, the pubescence ferruginous, firmly chartaceous when mature, scabrous. Racemes abundant, solitary, axillary, often clustered near the tips of the branches and branchlets, erect to nutant or pendent, 8-29 cm long, 4-8 cm wide, mostly short and loosely many-flowered; pedicels ca. 8 mm long, obscurely puberulent; torus expanded, not ribbed. Flowers with the calyx light, bright blue, the tube cylindric, gradually ampliate apically, ca. 3 mm long, ca. 2 mm wide basally and 2.5-3 mm wide apically, not ribbed, densely pubescent, the lobes oblong, rounded, 13-18 mm long, 4-6 mm wide, membranous and glabrous on both surfaces; the calycinal crest composed of 5 membranous, triangular-ovate erect, acute lobes ca. 1 mm long and wide, sparsely ciliate on the margins; corolla hypocrateriform, bright blue, the tube infundibular, 6-8 mm long, the basal portion narrow-cylindric and 1.5-2 mm wide, conspicuously ampliate to 4 or 5 mm apically, the lower 3/4 portion glabrous, the upper '/4 densely puberulent outside, within puberulent and densely villous-pubescent among the stamens, the anterior lobe broadly elliptic, 5-6.5 mm long, 4-4.5 mm wide, slightly sinuate along the margins, densely puberulent on both surfaces, the remaining lobes similar but smaller, 4-6 mm long, ca. 4 mm wide; stamens inserted 4.5 and 5 mm above the base of the corolla-tube, the staminode obsolete; ovary oblong-subobovate, glabrous; fruiting-calyx tough, the tube to 4 mm long, densely long-pubescent, the lobes firm and stiff, to 22 mm long and 7 mm wide, divergent and the calycinal crest callose, converging inwards.
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