Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unbranched treelets or trees 1–9 m tall.

Stems: Stems erect or ascending, usually unbranched, stems 7–20 mm in diameter toward apex. light gray or brown, unarmed, glarous, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, well dispersed on the distal stem or congested into apical rosettes. Blades narrowly elliptic, 12.5–25 cm long, 3.5–7.0 cm wide. Apex acute or cuspidate. Base cuneate or attenuate. Surfaces glabrous, blades fleshy when fresh, membranous to somewhat chartaceous when dry. Margins serrate or serrulate, undulate. Pinnately veined. Petioles 5–14 cm long, ⅓–⅔ as long as lamina. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences several per stem, axillary, racemose, anauxotelic, racemes 5–15–flowered; peduncle and rachis ascending or spreading, glabrous, peduncle 6–25 mm long; rachis 5–23 mm long; bracts 0.7–4.0 mm long, triangular or deltate (rarely becoming foliaceous, oblanceolate, up to 20 mm long, 7 mm wide, acute at apex, attenuate at base), pubescent, persistent, each subtending a pedicel; pedicels ascending or spreading, 5–7 mm long, ebracteolate or with a pair of minute knob-like glabrous or commonly pubescent bracteoles at or above the base.; hypanthium 4.5–7.5 mm long, 3.0-4.8 mm in diameter, ca. ¼–⅓ as long as corolla, obovoid, obconic, or ellipsoid. Flowers tetracyclic, bisexual (perfect), complete, protandrous, epigynous, resupinate, pedicellate. Calyx synsepalous, actinomorphic; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a glabrous hypanthium 1/10–⅓ as long as the corolla; lobes 5, 0.9–3.0 mm long, 0.4–1.5 mm wide, glabrous, persistent, distinct, triangular or deltate, 1/20–1/2 as long as the hypanthium. Corolla 16–24 mm long; tube 9–12 mm long, 1.2–2.0 mm tall at base, 1.5–3.5 mm tall above middle; dorsal lobes 7–12 mm long, 0.5–1.1 mm wide, ¾ as long to as long as tube; ventral lobes 6–10 mm long, 0.5–0.9 mm wide, sympetalous, zygomorphic, bilabiate, greenish (sometimes suffused with purple), glabrous; tube gently curved, 2.3-4.2 mm tall above the middle with a single dorsal knob, lobes 5, linear triangular, valvate, spreading, equaling or shorter than the tube (rarely somewhat longer), acute or acuminate at apex, somewhat dimorphic, the dorsal pair longer, the ventral three usually connate for ¼–1⁄2 their length. Stamens 5, syngenesious, antisepalous, exserted, emerging from the corolla above (rarely between) the dorsal lobes; filaments connate, free from the corolla, inserted on the rim of the hypanthium; filament tube 13-18 mm long; anthers connate, dithecal, dehiscing introrsely and longitudinally, 1/8–⅔ as long as the filament tube, the dorsal three a little longer than the ventral pair, occluding the orifice of the tube, dorsal anthers 4.5–8.0 mm long, ⅓–1⁄2 as long as filament tube; ventral anthers 3.5–6.5 mm long, with tufts of hairs 1.0–1.9 mm long at apex; anther tube 1.5-2 mm in diameter, the surface of the tube glabrous or sparsely pubescent. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-loculed, crowned by an annular nectary; ovules numerous, placentation axile; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near the apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit a small purple fleshy thin-walled berry; 8–10 mm in diameter; globose. Seeds numerous; 0.9–1.1 mm long; 0.5–0.6 mm wide; grayish white; ellipsoid; compressed; dull; transversely rugose (Type G of Buss et al. 2001).

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic <i>koa</i> forest.

Elevation Range: 915–1585 m.