Shrub or tree to 5 m tall; twigs often drying blackish, densely pubescent with sessile, porrect, pauciradiate, mostly sessile stellae. Leaves to 7 cm wide and 25 cm long, broadly lanceolate, margins sometimes slightly revolute, acuminate apically and basally, above scabrous with dispersed, sessile, porrect, pauciradiate stellae, beneath with somewhat larger but similar hairs; minor leaves wanting. Inflorescence a long-stalked, many-flowered cyme standing well above the foliage, the peduncle to 20 cm long, branching in the upper portion, puberulent to tomentose with sessile, porrect stellae, pedicels 2-9 mm long, slender, pubescent, abscissing almost at the base. Flowers with the calyx 3-5 mm long, lobed to half-way down, the lobes deltoid, a glabrate region at the base of the calyx often drying dark or appearing swollen but not forming a large and conspicuous annular enlargement; corolla white, drying yellowish-brown, 15 mm across, lobed to more than halfway down; anthers 3 mm long, the filaments glabrous; ovary glabrous or pubescent. Fruits yellow, glabrescent, 9-11 mm across; seeds 2 mm long.
Open areas, such as roadsides, thickets, plantations, and river banks in the moist coastal, limestone, and mountain forest regions of Puerto Rico at elevations up to 1,300 metres.
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