Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees, branched from base or rarely a single trunk with a branched crown.

Stems: Stems (0.8–)1–4(–7) m long, 2–10 cm in diameter, silky canescent with straight, appressed hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades usually elliptic, often broadly so, to ovate, broadly ovate, or lanceolate, rarely obovate, (1.5–)3–10(–13) cm long, (1–)2–4(–7.6) cm wide. Apex acuminate, acute, or obtuse, rarely retuse. Base cuneate to truncate. Surfaces usually densely pubescent with closely appressed or sometimes spreading hairs, especially on lower surface; upper surfaces usually less densely pubescent, sometimes both surfaces only sparsely pubescent or rarely glabrate. Margins entire. Pinnately veined. Petioles (3–)6–20 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in stout spikes 0.5–3(–5) cm long, 5–10 mm in diameter; peduncles (0.5–)2–5(–7.5) cm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), lanceoloid to narrowly ovoid, actinomorphic; each flower subtended by a persistent bract and 2 bracteoles. Calyx of 4 sepals, equal, lanceolate to ovate, 2–3(–4) mm long, pubescent with long spreading hairs and with a large tuft of hairs at base, or rarely glabrous. Sepals subtended by an ovate, scarious bract ca. 1.5–2.5 mm long, ± with a spine ca. 2 mm long, usually densely pubescent, usually persistent on the rachis, bracteoles ovate to lanceolate, scarious, ca. 1.5–2 mm long, deciduous with the calyx and fruit. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 4, connate at base; anthers dithecal. Ovary superior, 2–3(4)-carpellate, the carpels connate to form a compound, 1-celled ovary; ovule placentation basal, free-central, or rarely apical; style 1, often lobed.

Fruit: Fruit an utricle; ca. 2 mm long; enclosed by the calyx. Seeds 1 per fruit; the surface usually lustrous; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Scattered to sometimes common in open dry forest; on exposed ridges; and lava fields on all of the main islands.

Elevation Range: 0–750 m.