Zenobia

Shrubs, (glabrous, often glaucous). Stems erect, twigs glabrous. Leaves deciduous to semipersistent; blade elliptic to elliptic-ovate or ovate, coriaceous, margins irregularly and shallowly serrulate-crenulate or entire, plane, surfaces finely hairy, glabrescent; venation reticulodromous or brochidodromous. Inflorescences axillary racemes of (2-)5-12-flowered corymbs, or solitary flowers, borne on leafless stems. Flowers: sepals 5, distinct, ovate to ovate-deltate; petals 5, connate ca. 3/4 their lengths, white, corolla broadly campanulate, lobes much shorter than tube; stamens 10, included; filaments straight, flattened, dilated proximally, glabrous, without spurs; anthers with 4 awns, dehiscent by oblong pores, (disintegration tissue present in connective); pistil 5-carpellate; ovary 5-locular; stigma truncate. Fruits capsular, 5-valved, depressed-globose, dry. Seeds 40-200, ovoid; testa smooth. x = 11.

Fls 5-merous; cal saucer-shaped, the lobes valvate; cor campanulate, the broad, short lobes outcurved; stamens included; filaments slender; anthers lanceolate, dorsifixed, the pollen-sacs united throughout, each opening by a terminal pore and with 2 erect slender awns; ovary subglobose; style about equaling the cor-tube; stigma truncate; capsule subglobose, 5-lobed, loculicidal; seeds minutely rugose; shrubs with deciduous, veiny, crenate- serrate lvs and white or pink fls on long pedicels in umbelliform clusters from the nodes of a lfless terminal axis, forming an elongate panicle. Monospecific.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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