Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unbranched shrubs 1.8–3.6 m tall.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades narrowly elliptic, blades 28–36 cm long, 3–5 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base attenuate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces pubescent. Margins undulate. Petioles winged, 3–5 cm long narrowing imperceptibly from base. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 5–6–flowered in axillary racemes, pubescent, peduncles ca. 43 mm long, pedicels ca. 10 mm long; hypanthium oblong, pubescent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes triangular, ca. 4 mm long, apex acute, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla (not fully expanded) yellowish, slightly curved, pubescent, the lobes spreading, the tube suberect to strongly arcuate, dorsally cleft to about the middle, the lobes connate, spreading, rarely erect or all 5 downcurved in the same plane. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column pubescent; anthers glabrous, 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. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Berries yellow; obovoid; ca. 17 mm long; ca. 11 mm wide. Seeds numerous; small; brown to black; smooth; shiny; 0.2–0.5(–2) mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Known only from the type (Forbes 292.K; BISH; K; US); collected in 1909 near Wahiawa Bog; south-central Kaua'i.

Elevation Range: