Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub.

Stems: Stems woody, decumbent, 3–8 dm long, leafy in upper ½.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear or narrowly elliptic, 8–20 cm long, 0.5–2 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Surfaces glabrous, slightly paler on lower surface. Margins minutely callose–denticulate, flat. Sessile to subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2–6–branched at base, 15–25 cm long, pedicels 8–12 mm long, glabrous, bracts linear and 12–15 mm long, or narrowly elliptic and 30–60 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 4–10 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes 5, 3–5 mm long, sepals connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dorsally cleft almost to base, blue, 18-26 mm long, 3-4 mm wide, the lobes spirally revolute, tube suberect. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; staminal column sparsely pubescent; anthers glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube.

Fruit: Capsules ovoid; 6–12 mm long; dehiscent at apex by 2 valves. Seeds numerous; brownish; 0.5 mm long; smooth; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring on cliffs in wet forest; Moloka'i.

Elevation Range: 1,000–1,200 m.