Erect herb to 2 m tall, stems succulent, pilose with simple hairs. Leaves broadly ovate or elliptical to 20 cm long, pilose to glabrate, above with scattered erect hairs on the lamina, beneath mostly pilose along the veins, apically short acuminate, basally obtuse to rounded or subcordate; petioles short, to 2 cm long, minor leaves rotund ca. 1/4 as long as the major leaves but occasionally much reduced or tardily emergent. Inflorescences few-to many-flowered fascicles or subumbellate on short or elongate, stout or slender, simple or branched, some-times bracteate peduncles, these manifestations sometimes all on the same plant; pedicels 1-3 cm long, pubescent, elongating slightly in fruit. Flowers with the calyx 3-6 mm long, broader than long, urceolate, pilose to glabrate, the apex entire and manifestly contracted, especially in fruit, subtended by a conspicuous continuous or interrupted evagination of the calyx wall which on the herbarium sheet may appear as a large backward directed collar or teeth and cause the calyx margin to appear undulate or lobed; corolla large and showy, cream colored, often with broad ribs of purple or green on the outside, pilose to glabrate, the hairs white, the united portion short-campanulate and angled, the lobes 10-15 mm long, slightly concave dorsally, narrowly deltoid, approximate and forming a cup, glabrous within except for a ring of pubescence at the point of filament insertion; the filaments short, pilose, inserted at the top of the corolla tube (limb), the anthers yellow with conspicuous dark connectives on the dorsal (abaxial) sur-face, broadly ovate or pyriform, apiculate, 3-6 mm long, partly exserted, the stigma included. Fruit (immature) depressed globose (oblate), glabrous with a conspicuous terminal stylar scar, the basal half loosely enclosed by the calyx.
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