Liana, usually +/- herbaceous, mostly glabrous; sap milky; stem with a prominent interpetiolar ridge. Leaves opposite; petioles 5-15 mm long (to 25 mm), usually with 2 pairs of subconical glands at apex, the lower pair sometimes fused into 1 large gland; blades elliptic to oblong-elliptic or ovate, acute to short-acuminate or mucronate at apex, obtuse to rounded at base, 6-11 cm long, 2-4 (5.5) cm wide. Racemes short, branched or unbranched, cymose; pedicels to ca 1 cm long; flowers 5-parted, few open at any time; calyx lobes ca 3 mm long, blunt; corolla tube 1.5-2.5 cm long, constricted about midway, green apically, greenish basally, the limb spreading, ca 2.5 cm wide, the lobes green at base, white on margins and at apex; stamens included, 4.7 mm long; filaments fused to tube, densely pubescent near apex; anthers ca 4 mm long, connate and glued to stigma, the connective pilose; ovary sparsely and minutely muricate; style 1; stigma 1, fusiform-umbraculiform; nectaries separate or growing together; nectar copious. Follicles paired, slender, 15-40 cm long, terete, less than 5 mm diam; seeds many, linear, ca 1 cm long, densely pubescent, with a tuft of trichomes ca 2.5 cm long at apex. Croat 6698, 7243. Occasional along the margins of the forest, no doubt occurring in the canopy as well. Flowers throughout the year, principally in the late rainy to early dry seasons. Fruit maturity time uncertain. Southern Mexico to northern South America. In Panama, known principally from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, Bocas del Toro, San Blas, Veraguas, and Panama; known also from tropical dry forest in Panama, from premontane moist forest in the Canal Zone and Panama, and from premontane wet forest in Coclé. and Panama.