This species is characterized by its branched shrub habit, generally well developed leaves on well developed petioles, laminar bilobed stipules, and flowers borne in a single large head enclosed by a pair of large, red to red-orange, scarlet, crimson, or purple bracts. The leaves are distinctive in their smooth undersurfaces and upper surfaces with the veins raised. The inflorescences are terminal, pedunculate, and the two outermost (involucral) inflorescence bracts are about twice as large as the remaining involucral bracts. The corollas are white or yellow. Apparently often the inflorescences are red or red-orange in flower and become purple in fruit. Palicourea elata is common locally in many sites, and also commonly collected because it is showy, in flower most of the year, and particularly frequent as a shrub on forest edges such as roadsides with flowers that are easy to reach. In fact, this species is one of the most well known and commonly collected Palicourea species in Mesoamerica, fondly called "hot lips" by English-speakers.
Palicourea elata varies in leaf and inflorescence size, and form of the inflorescence. The inflorescences vary markedly in size of the head, and size and shape of the involucral bracts, from ovate to broadly orbicular and acute to rounded. The inflorescences are intially subcapitate and characterized by most authors as such, but often the inflorescence then expands tardily with short secondary axes developing and the initially involucral bracts left at behind the first branching node. Here the flowers are all still grouped in 3-5 subcapitate, involurcate heads. This expanded inflorescence form is found throught the range of this species but seen more frequently in the northern part. Occasional plants have variant inflorescence colors, notably sometimes yellow; these do not seem to differ in any other way and are not recognized taxonomically here. Another occasional variant form has two or more fasciculate inflorescences, or a pseudoaxillary inflorescence.
Palicourea elata and Palicourea correae are quitre similar, especially as herbarium specimens; in life they generally have quite different aspects. Palicourea correae has purple inflorescences with a larger flower head and involucral bracts that are generally markedly larger than bracts of the next rank, while Palicorea elata has generally orange-red to red inflorescendes with smaller flower heads and involucral bracts that are markedly larger than those of the next rank, but not at all as large as those of Palicourea correae.
The Palicourea elata Group
Palicourea elata is similar to and apparently related to several other Central American species, where are here treated as the Palicourea elata Group: Palicourea chiriquensis, Palicourea correae, Palicourea dichroa, Palicourea elata, and Palicourea paradichroa. These are all found in wet forests in Mesoamerica, and Palicourea elata additionally ranges to Jamaica and the Pacific slopes of northwestern South America. These species are reviewed here as a group, which has not been studied in detail elsewhere. Various aspects of these species have been studied recently by various authors while the systematic position of this group in Palicourea is not yet clear, so publication of an article reviewing these as a species group is not well justified at this time and this new review is presented only here as an informal web page discussion . These species have been treated together taxonomically by Taylor (2012; as Psychotria), with full morphological descriptions and ecologiccal and geographic details; they were transferred taxonomically to Palicourea by Borhidi (2011), with no additional or new information provided; and they were reviewed nomenclaturally by Berger (2018), with no additional information beyond typifications and some new synonymy.
Palicourea correae was studied also by Taylor (2018), who included it as a species of Palicourea sect. Bracteiflorae based on the limited molecular systematic data available then. Molecular data is still inadequate to clarify relationships of the Palicourea elata group within this genus, with only some of the species so far sampled and markedly changing relationships found as more Palicourea species are added to the overall analysis (Bedoya et al., submitted; Mumford et al., in prep.). The currently available, incomplete, unfinalized molecular analyses call into question now the circumscription of Palicourea sect. Bracteiflorae (which was provisional from the beginning). The species of the Palicourea elata group are distinctive morphologically, but the distinctive characters they share are unusual in Palicourea overall and so do not indicate any other relationships within the genus. The Palicourea elata group is here included in Palicourea subg. Montanae, but no more systematic placement is possible at this time except that Palicourea correae is here excluded from Palicourea sect. Bracteiflorae.
The Palicourea elata group is characterized by its combination of petiolate, narrowly elliptic to elliptic-oblong or oblanceolate leaves with the secondary veins prominulous to prominent on the upper surface and plane to thickened or prominulous below, and without intersecondary veins and with the higher-order remaining venation generally not visible; laminar stipules that are bilobed on each interpetiolar side for about 2/3--3/4 of their length with lobes broadly ligulate to ovate and apically rounded to obtuse; subcapitate inflorescences with well developed peduncles and well developed involucral bracts, with 1--2 outermost involucral pairs enclosing the heads and then the individual flower groups enclosed in more well developed bracts, with the inflorescences unbranched or sometimes branched to 1--2 orders with the axes terminating in involucrate heads; relatively well developed, tubular-funnelform corollas, with the tubes 10-16 mm long; well developed fruits, 5-15 x 4-6 mm; and pyrenes abaxially smooth or with quite weak longitudinally ridges or angled. The leaves of these species are unusual and distinctive in their "upside-down" form, with the veins more prominent adaxially; this is the opposite of the typical Palicourea (and Rubiaceae) leaf blade form with the veins more prominent below. The absence of visible intersecondary veins is also unusual in Palicourea. The inflorescences of the Palicourea elata group have reatively large heads and enclosed in showy bracts, which are usually red to purple; this is the form that was long used to characterize the genus Cephaelis, but is now known to have arisen a number of different times within Palicourea (Bedoya et al., submitted).
The Palicourea elata group includes 5 species found in wet forest at 0--2500 m from south-central Mexico and Jamaica though Central America to northwestern South America, in western Colombia and northwestern Ecuador. All of the species are found in Panama, and most of them in Costa Rica. Palicourea elata is the most commonly collected and widely ranging species, found throughout the range of this species group.
The Palicourea elata group's species are similar to some other Palicourea species with subcapitate inflorescences enclosed by well developed bracts. One similar Mesoamerican species is Palicourea glomerulata, which has some other related, morphologically similar species in South America; these can all be separated by their leaves with the secondary veins equally developed on both sides or more prominent abaxially and numerous developed intersecondary veins, tubular stipules without lobes or with two short teeth on each interpetiolar side, and subsessile inflorescences. Also similar to the Palicourea elata group are Palicourea rosea, Palicourea tonduzii, Palicourea tomentosa, and a number of other, related South American species, which can be separated by their leaves with the secondary veins more prominent abaxially than above and regularly developed intersecondary veins, and stipules with narrowly triangular acute lobes. Also similar in general aspect are some species of Palicourea sect. Bracteiflorae, which differ in their inflorescences branched to several orders and not enclosed by enlarged involucral bracts.