Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, shrubs, or small trees.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Margins entire or toothed. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, solitary or in cymes, bracteolate. Flowers bisexual (perfect), strongly irregular. Calyx 5–parted. Corolla funnelform–unilabiate, 5–parted, the tube split adaxially, the lobes spreading, often winged. Stamens 5, distinct; 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 exserted and protruding through the adaxially split tube, curved abruptly downward near stigma; stigma 1–2-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; 2–celled. Seeds 1 to numerous; with oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range:

Historical Distribution

Images

Accepted Subtaxa (in Hawai'i) (15)

Scaevola aemula R.Br.

Scaevola chamissoniana Gaudich.

Scaevola coriacea Nutt.

Scaevola floribunda A.Gray

Scaevola gaudichaudiana Cham.

Scaevola gaudichaudii Hook. & Arn.

Scaevola glabra Hook. & Arn.

Scaevola hobdyi W.L.Wagner

Scaevola kilaueae O.Deg.

Scaevola marquesensis F.Br.

Scaevola mollis Hook. & Arn.

Scaevola procera Hillebr.

Scaevola subcapitata F.Br.

Scaevola taccada (Gaertn.) Roxb.

Scaevola × cerasifolia Skottsb.

Uses and Culture

USES

Purplish black dye made from fruit (Krauss 1993:66)
Purplish black dye made from the fruit

PROPAGATION/CULTIVATION

Intermediate [S. gaudichaudii]. Seeds soaked in 0.05% solution of gibberellic acid for 2 days; germination ranges from 1-9 months; stem-tip cuttings roots in 1-3 months; planted out in full sun in dry areas & grows rapidly after outplanting; responds well to dilute foliar fertilizer (Culliney and Koebele 1999:124–126; Nagata 1992 [S. gaudichaudiana]).