Simple or sparingly branched herbs up to 1.6 meters high; stems erect or ascending, subquadrangular, densely pilose, the hairs rigid, brownish, vitreous, more or less spreading, up to 3.5 mm. long; leaf blades ovate to oblong-ovate, up to 14 cm. long and 5.5 cm. wide, subacute to short-acuminate, acute to obtuse at base and decurrent on the petiole, moderately firm, entire or shallowly and obscurely dentate, both surfaces rather densely pilose with rigid brownish ascending hairs up to 2.5 mm. long, the costa and lateral veins (5 or 6 pairs) of the upper surface obscure, those of the lower surface promi- nent and in addition to the long rigid spreading hairs mostly bearing numerous small (about 0.16 mm. long) appressed ones, the cystoliths prominent, up to 0.2 mm. long; petioles 5 to 10 cm. long, bearing both long rigid spreading hairs and smaller closely appressed ones; flowers borne in small clusters, the calyces and bractlets hidden by the ter- minal leaves or, in mature plants, the flower clusters arranged in terminal spikes usually about 6 cm. long, the clusters subtended by small subsessile lanceolate leaves, these mostly 1.5 to 5 cm, long and 0.5 to 1.5 cm. wide, acuminate to acute (the tips often curved), the pubescence that of the main stem leaves, each flower subtended by a pair of linear or spatulate pilose bractlets up to 1 cm. long and 2 mm. wide; mature calyx 6.5 mm. long, the segments lanceolate, 5 mm. long, 0.75 mm. wide near base, thence gradually narrowed into a slender tip, sparingly hirtellous, the hairs about 0.16 mm. long, subappressed or ascending, confined mostly to the costa and tips of the segments; corolla pale pink or lavender, minutely pubescent, the narrow portion of the corolla tube (except at base) densely so with
more or less spreading hairs up to 0.16 mm. long, the lower half of the corolla tube narrowly cylindric, 1.5 mm. in diameter, the upper por- tion funnelform, slightly ventricose, 12 mm. broad at mouth, the limb 2 cm. broad, the lobes suborbicular, about 7 mm. in diameter; stamens included, attached near the summit of the narrow portion of the corolla tube, the filaments of the longer pair about 7 mm. in length, those of the shorter pair 5 mm., all glabrous, the anthers 2.5 mm. long, 0.5 mm. broad; stigma reaching the tip of the shorter pair of stamens, the developed lobe flat, oblong, rounded; ovary and style hirtellous with minute spreading or ascending hairs; capsules not seen.
Type in the Kew Herbarium, collected in a dense jungle near shore of Gorgona Island (west of Cauca), Colombia, Oct. 8, 1942, by L. E. Cheesman (No. 533).