Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub.

Stems: Stems woody, ascending, 4–8 dm long, leafy in upper ½.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear to narrowly elliptic, 10–22 cm long, 0.8–1.4 cm wide. Apex acute. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces white tomentose. Margins callose–serrulate, flat. Sessile or subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences unbranched, 8–22 cm long, pedicels 10–14 mm long, bracts linear, 10–14 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 3–4 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes subulate, 4–6 mm long, sepals connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dorsally cleft almost to base, blue to lilac, 18-24 mm long, 3-4 mm wide, glabrous, the lobes spirally revolute, tube suberect. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; staminal column pubescent; anthers glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, 2-celled, often crowned with an annular nectary disk; ovule placentation axile, or when 1-celled with 2 parietal placentas; stigmas wet or dry, 2-lobed, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Capsules ovoid; 5–6 mm long; dehiscent at apex by 2 valves. Seeds numerous; smooth; brown; 0.5 mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest; Maui.

Elevation Range: 450–1,500 m.