Description:
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Arching shrub, up to 2·5 m. high, close to the species above, but distinct because of the different shape of the leaves and distributions. Stems slender, trailing, woody, covered with whitish woolly somewhat floccose tomentum as are the leaves, petioles, peduncles, bracts and generally the sepals. Leaf lamina ovate-oblong, elliptic-oblong or lanceolate-oblong, 5–20·5 × 3–13 cm., obtuse or acute at the apex broadly rounded or subtruncate at the base, margin entire, repand to profoundly dentate, glabrescent above with an impressed nervation and covered with a dense granular whitish tomentum beneath; petiole up to 4 cm. long, bearing a gland on each side of the insertion of the lamina. Flowers solitary or in more or less 3-flowered cymes; peduncle 1–3 cm. long; pedicels about 1·2 cm. long; bracts obovate, up to 2·5 cm. long, tomentose outside. Sepals elliptic, up to 1·6 cm. long, obtuse, chartaceous, generally persistently tomentose. Corolla funnel-shaped, white or pale mauve, with purple throat, 6·5–9 cm. long and limb up to 6 cm. in diam. Capsule broadly ellipsoid, up to 1·6 cm. long, coriaceous, glabrous. Seeds densely covered with long white or sometimes fulvous cottony hairs, giving the dehisced fruit the appearance of an open cotton ball.
From FZ, Vol 8, Part 1, page 9, (1987) Author: Maria Leonor Gonçalves |