Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Branched shrubs or trees 2–5 m tall.

Stems: Branches dark reddish brown, slender, glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, clustered toward the tips of the branches. Blades narrowly lanceolate to linear–lanceolate or linear–elliptic, 4–7 cm long, 0.5–1.4 cm wide. Apex longacuminate and often slightly hooked. Base cuneate. Surfaces glabrous; upper surfaces black punctate; lower surfaces inconspicuously reticulate. Margins entire and slightly thickened. Submarginal vein present. Subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 1–3 in bracteolate fascicles among and slightly below the leaves, pedicels 2–4 mm long, glabrous. Flowers apparently bisexual (perfect). Calyx 4–5(6)-lobed, usually deeply so, the lobes imbricate or valvate in bud, punctate or with secretory lines, lobes ca. 2 mm long, glabrous, punctate, margins ciliate. Corolla 4–5(6)-lobed, the lobes nearly distinct or connate up to ½ their length, imbricate in bud, oblanceolate, ca. 3.5 mm long. Anthers ca. 1.5 mm long, apex with a short tuft of hairs. Ovary superior, 3–5(6)-carpellate, 1-celled; ovules few in a single row, ovary reduced and sterile or absent in staminate flowers; style very short or absent, terminal; stigma capitate-angled.

Fruit: Drupes bluish black at maturity; globose; ca. 8 mm in diameter. Seeds 1 per fruit; small; dark colored; subglobose; excavated at base.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: 640–650 m (Wahiawā Bog) and 1,400–1,525 m. (Alaka'i Swamp to Mount Wai'ale'ale)