Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Shrubs or small trees 3–6(–15) m tall.
Stems:
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Opposite.
Blades narrowly to broadly elliptic, elliptic–ovate, or lanceolate to ovate, 2.8–9 cm long, 0.9–4.1 cm wide.
Apex obtuse to rounded, sometimes emarginate.
Base cuneate.
Surfaces glabrous, glossy on upper surface; lower surfaces less so or dull, somewhat thickened and coriaceous.
Margins entire.
Petioles 0–1 cm long.
Stipules 2–5 mm long, interpetiolar, deltoid to ovate or lanceolate, lacking adaxial indument, apex abruptly acuminate to caudate, valvate in bud, usually bearing mucilate-producing colleters on inner surface that aid in protection of the growing shoot tip.
Flowers:
Flowers 4- or 5-merous, numerous in corymbose cymes, cymes 2.5–3.5 cm long, pedicels 1–3 mm long, the bracts and bracteoles usually inconspicuous; hypanthium broadly ellipsoid to nearly hemispherical.
Flowers bisexual (perfect) or functionally pistillate, protandrous, often heterostylous; fragrant, insect-pollinated.
Calyx ca. 2 mm long, minutely dentate, limb truncate to dentate, 4-5-lobed with open aestivation, usually shorter than hypanthium, lobes usually small, rudimentary or absent.
Corolla white, 4–6-lobed, 4–7 mm long, the lobes 3–4.5 mm long, reflexed, subequal to tube in length or longer or shorter, often thickened toward apex, valvate, imbricate, or convolute, usually obtuse to acute, tube broadly cylindric, often with deflexed hairs within and pubescent at throat; nectary disk cushion–shaped with a dense fringe of retrorse hairs.
Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, attached in corolla throat, exserted; filaments ca. 1.5–2.5 mm long, well developed; anthers ca. 1.5–2.5 mm long, dorsifixed near base, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, usually reflexed, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.
Ovary inferior, 2-locular; ovules solitary in each locule, attached to the upper 1/3 of septum; style 5.5-7.5 mm long, slender, longer than corolla tube, glabrous, sometimes narrowing at apex, 1 or as many as carpels, terminal, the stigmatic knob cylindric, longer than broad, hollow to about the middle, bifid or deeply cleft at apex when mature; stigmas 2-lobed, dry or occasionally wet.
Fruit:
Drupes 2-seeded black; juicy; obovoid; somewhat compressed; grooved on each side; emarginate; 8–10 mm long; the pyrenes cartilaginous to woody; rugulose to deeply furrowed; with a shallow apical cleft.
Seeds incurved; with entire endosperm.
Ploidy:
Habitat:
Dry shrubland and dry to mesic forest; often on slopes; also apparently in wet forest on O'ahu.
Elevation Range:
10–860(–1160) m.