Slender shrubby plants 1 to 2 meters long, usually procumbent with erect inflorescences; stems subquadrangular, glabrous or the upper portions very sparingly puberulous; leaf blades oblong-elliptic, up to 15.5 cm. long and 5 cm. wide, short-acuminate (the tip itself blunt), narrowed and cuneate at base, moderately firm, entire or undulate, remotely strigillose, the hairs up to 0.25 mm. long, those of the under surface confined chiefly to costa and lateral veins (about 10 pairs), these and the coarsely reticulated veinlets moderately conspicuous, the cystoliths numerous and rather conspicuous under a lens; petioles up to 3 cm. long and 1 mm. thick, sparingly puberulous; flowers borne in diffuse terminal and axillary panicles up to 14 cm. long and about 6 cm. broad, the terminal and axillary panicles often continuous, the branches of the panicle dichotomously forked, often with a flower in the fork, slender, sparingly hirtellous, the hairs more or less spreading, up to 0.3 mm. long; bracts subtending the branches of the panicle ovate, sessile, 1 cm. long and about 8 mm. wide, apic- ulate or the lowermost pair much larger, up to 4 cm. long and 1.5 cm. wide, short-acuminate; bracts subtending the flowers linear, about 3 mm. long and 0.75 mm. wide, acute at tip, glabrous or minutely hirtellous; pedicels slender, up to 4 mm. long, 0.25 to 0.5 mm. thick, glabrous with scattered minute cystoliths; calyx segments linear- lanceolate, 6 to 7 mm. long and 1 mm. wide (the tip acute and blunt- ish), 3-nerved, glabrous or bearing a few more or less spreading glan- dular trichomes up to 0.5 mm. long; corolla wine-red, glabrous, the tube about 1 cm. long, 3 mm. broad near base, narrowed at 4 mm. above base to 2 mm., thence enlarged to 3 mm. at mouth, the upper lip erect, linear, 7 mm. long, 2 mm. wide near base, somewhat narrowed toward the rounded tip, delicately 3-nerved, the lower lip spreading, ovate, about 8 mm. long and 7 mm. wide, terminated by 3 rounded lobes about 0.5 mm. long; stamens glabrous, exserted about 2 cm. beyond the mouth of the corolla tube, the anthers linear, 2.5 mm. long, 0.75 mm. thick; pistil not seen; capsules clavate, 13 mm. long, 4 mm. wide, 2 mm. thick, glabrous; retinacula 2.5 mm. long, subacute and erose; seed flattened, suborbicular, about 2 mm. long and broad, muricate or pebbled, oblique at base.
Type in the U. S. National Herbarium, No. 1950035, collected in woods at Aguabonita, valley of the Río San José, Moscopán Region, Cordillera Central, Department of Cauca, Colombia, 2,280 meters altitude, January 30, 1947, by J. Cuatrecasas (No. 23468).
Also of this species is Fosberg's No. 19941 (US), collected in thick brushy ground-cover under trees in mossy, ridge-type, wet forests with deep humus, at the head of Río Villalobos, southwest of Pitalito, on the boundary between the Departments of Huila and Cauca, Colombia, 2,300 meters altitude, February 6, 1943.