Epiphytic or rarely terrestrial coarse herbs or small shrubs; stems erect or ascending, to 60 cm tall, to 8 mm in diam., succulent or woody in older stems, usually reddish, strigose to sericeous toward the apex, glabrous below, the nodes swollen; branches few. Leaves equal in a pair; blades broadly elliptic, ovate or obovate, 6-15 cm long, 2-6 cm wide, subcoriaceous or fleshy, the apex acute, the base acute to cuneate, sometimes decurrent, serrulate, above dark or light green, sparsely strigillose, nearly glabrous, below deep red or maroon, rarely light green, but the veins sometimes green; petioles 0.5-2.0 cm long, strigillose. Inflorescences axillary of dense cymes; peduncles short or lacking; bracts lanceolate ovate, red or green, strigose to sericeous, more dense near the serulate margin; pedicels 2-5 mm long, reddish, strigillose. Flowers few or several per inflorescence; calyx lobes distinct, lanceolate, serrulate, unequal, the posterior lobe larger, 8-15 mm long, 4-7 mm wide, the other lobes a little smaller, green, cream colored, or flushed with red, strigillose; corolla white or yellowish with reddish spots on the lower side, the upper 2 lobes dull red or orange, the tube oblique in the calyx, spurred at the base, narrowly campanulate or funnelform, 11-14 mm long, white sericeous, inside pilose, the limb spreading, ca. 1 cm across, the lobes more or less entire, unequal, basal lobe ca. 4 mm long, 6 mm wide, the lateral and the upper lobes a little smaller; stamens 4, filaments adnate to the base of the corolla tube for ca. 3 mm, slender, curved, ca. 4 mm long, glandular, reddish toward the anthers, the anthers oblong, coherent in 2 pairs, each ca. 0.5 mm long; disc reduced to a glabrous posterior, bibbed gland; ovary pilose, the style ca. 5 mm long, reddish, glabrous above, the stigma stomatomorphic. Berry globose, ca. 5 mm wide, white, pilose; seeds fusiform, less than 1 mm long, striate, dark reddish brown. Chromo-somes n = 9 (Wiehler, 1975).
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