Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small shrubby trees 3–5 m tall.

Stems: Young branches chestnut or pale brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades obovate, obovate–oblong to nearly elliptic–ovate,2.5–10 cm long, 1.8–5.5 cm wide. Apex obtuse, rounded, or subtruncate. Base obtuse, rounded, or subcordate. Surfaces glabrous or lower surfaces puberulent; drying a conspicuous orangish brown, stiffly coriaceous, rugose, domatia absent or very small and inconspicuous in the vein axils. Margins entire. Lateral veins 6–12 pairs, vein reticulations usually very conspicuous. Petioles 0–0.3 cm long. Stipules broadly ovate to obovate, up to 10 mm long, inner surface glabrous, tardily caducous.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with 1–2 nodes of verticillate branching, branches usually again divaricately branched, the ultimate ones terminated by a cymule of 3 sessile flowers or in double cymules, subtended by small bracts, peduncles 0–5 cm long, peduncles and branches terete (cylindrical) or quadrangular, reddish pubescent or sometimes glabrous. Flowers 4–5-merous, insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual, often heterostylous. Calyx 2–4.5 mm long, 4-6-lobed, somewhat or strongly dilated toward apex, subtruncate or with shallow, obtuse, glabrous or pubescent lobes, the tube usually shorter than hypanthium. Corolla white, tube 2–4 mm long, slightly expanded toward apex, throat glabrous, the lobes thick, broadly ovate to obovate, 2–4 mm long, glabrous, reflexed at anthesis; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments of staminate flowers up to 1 mm long; anthers attached at base, oblong–elliptic, 0.9–1.2 mm long, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous, 1.7–3.2 mm long; style 1 or as many as carpels, terminal, slender, 1.2–2 mm long at anthesis; stigmas 2, lobed or capitate, divaricate, up to 0.8 mm long, glabrous or puberulent; dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; orange; pyriform–globose; 9–11 mm long; often with a very short disk protruding from within the remnant calyx; pyrenes 1-2(-4); nearly hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin with 1-2 often T-shaped invaginations on the ventral surface; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring on or near windswept summits; Ko'olau Mountains; O'ahu.

Elevation Range: (450–)520–860 m.