Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 1.5–6 m tall, epiphytic.

Stems: Stems branched repeatedly, spreading, light gray or light brown, glabrous or rarely pubescent, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars near apex, pith solid, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong or elliptic, 8–20 cm long, 3–5 cm wide. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base cuneate, obtuse, or rounded. Surfaces glabrous; upper surfaces dark green, glossy; lower surfaces green, sometimes suffused with purple, dull. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 3–6 cm long, glabrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2–flowered or often 1–flowered by abortion, glabrous; peduncle 0.8–1.7 cm long, spreading, bibracteate at middle or apex; pedicels 3–4.5 cm long, spreading, 2–5 times longer than peduncle, bibracteolate near base. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1–1.5 cm long, 1–1.5 cm in diameter, hemispheric or obconic, glabrous. Calyx lobes 1–2 mm long, 0.5–1 mm wide, triangular; apex acute or acuminate. Corolla 5–7.2 cm long, unilabiate, dark purple and glossy or rarely greenish white and dull, glabrous; tube 4–6 cm long, 0.8–1.3 cm in diameter, arcuate, narrower at middle than at base; lobes 1–2 cm long, 2–4 mm wide, deflexed. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, staminal column strongly exserted, erect or suberect; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, dark purple or rarely greenish white, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, rarely so on the surfaces, the tube 1.7–1.8 cm long, 3.5–4.5 mm in diameter, glabrous or sparingly pubescent along sutures and near apex; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 4.8–6.3 cm long, dark purple or rarely greenish white, glabrous. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-carpellate, 2-loculed; ovule placentation axile, placentae large; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near 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: Berries 2.5–3 cm long; 2.5–3 cm wide; orange; subglobose. Seeds numerous; tiny; dark brown or black; minutely foveate–reticulate; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Epiphytic on 'ōhi'a; koa; 'ōlapa; and tree ferns in wet forest.

Elevation Range: 530–1,150 m.