Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small, sprawling shrubs.

Stems: Stems terete (cylindrical), striate, glabrous, with short, leafy, lateral branches at most nodes.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades ovate to lanceolate, 1–3(–4.5) cm long, ca.1.4–1.8 cm wide. Apex acute. Base cuneate to rounded, bases connate below stipules. Lower surfaces sparsely puberulent, blades thin, chartaceous. Margins entire. Lateral veins few, strongly ascending, higher order venation inconspicuously reticulate. Subsessile. Stipules connate, somewhat carinate, 2–3 mm long, hirtellous, apex shortly mucronate.

Flowers: Flowers in narrow, decussate cymes, peduncles slender, ca. 6–10 mm long, pedicels ca.2–5 mm long, bracts narrowly ovate, ca. 1–1.5 cm long; hypanthium turbinate, ca. 1 mm long. Flowers insect-pollinated, probably bisexual (perfect) and pistillate. Calyx 4-5-lobed, lobes ca. 2–3 mm long, ca. 0.6–0.8 mm wide, apparently not enlarging in fruit, sinuses puberulent. Corolla color unknown, slender, fleshy, salverform, glaucous, the tube 6–12 mm long, the limb quadrangular and depressed in bud, the lobes ca. 4 mm long, strongly inflexed in bud; nectary disc present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted just below corolla throat; anthers sessile or on short filaments, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior or partly so, 2(-4)-locular; ovules few to numerous on fleshy placentas near middle of septum; style as many as carpels, cylindrical to filiform, terminal, slender, densely woolly-pilose in lower 1/2, apex scarcely 2-lobed; stigma bilobed or subcapitate, included or exserted.

Fruit: Capsules globose; orange; 1.25 cm in diameter; dehiscing loculicidally across disk; endocarp apparently sclerified; disk slightly raised. Seeds nearly black; peltate; irregularly angled; pitted; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Known only from collections made on southwestern slopes of Haleakalā; East Maui.

Elevation Range: 1220 m.