Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or occasionally small trees 1.5–3 m tall.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly oblanceolate or obovate, 5–10 cm long, 2–3 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base acuminate. Surfaces glabrous or glabrate. Margins toothed usually in distal ⅓–½. Petioles 0.5–1.5 cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers (3–)7–18 or more in open cymes 80–120 mm long, these as long as or longer than leaves, peduncles 20–60(–80) mm long, with paired, narrowly oblanceolate bracteoles 1–3 mm long subtending the pedicels. Flowers bisexual (perfect), strongly irregular, fragrant. Calyx 5–parted, minute. Corolla funnelform–unilabiate, 5–parted, white, glabrous, the tube 12–20 mm long split adaxially, the lobes spreading, 6–12 mm long, margins winged. Stamens 5, distinct, slightly shorter than corolla tube; anthers introrse, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, the pollen shed from the coherent anthers and collected by the indusium on the outgrowing style. Ovary inferior, ovoid, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; style 18–22 mm long, exserted and protruding through the adaxially split tube, curved abruptly downward near stigma; stigma 1–2-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; 2–celled; dark purplish black or rarely white; ovoid; 4–8 mm long; 24 mm wide; glabrous. Seeds 1 to numerous; with oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 16*

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest and open areas; on Kaua'i and O'ahu.

Elevation Range: 170–800 m.