Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees up to 12 m tall.

Stems: Branches grayish, reddish, or yellowish brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades elliptic to orbicular, 2.5–20.5 cm long, 2–9 cm wide. Apex obtuse to rounded, sometimes with a short abrupt point. Base acuminate, acute, obtuse, or nearly truncate. Surfaces glabrous to pubescent; blades chartaceous to coriaceous, ± with domatia in vein axils. Margins entire. Lateral veins 5–13 pairs. Petioles 0.5–4.7 cm long. Stipules broadly ovate to obovate, up to 8 mm long, usually glabrous but with a flattened patch of bristle-like hairs in the axil.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with verticillate branching, the branches usually verticillately branched again, and the secondary branches again branched, the ultimate branches terminated by a 3–flowered cymule, peduncles 1–7.5 cm long, terminal flower of each cymule sessile, lateral ones often on short pedicels, inflorescence axes reddish, yellowish brown, or whitish pubescent, sometimes densely so. Flowers insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual, usually heterostylous, 4–5-merous. Calyx 4-6-lobed, 2–3 mm long, somewhat dilated toward apex, glabrous or pubescent, truncate or with very small obtuse lobes. Corolla white, 4-6-lobed, tube 1–2 mm long at anthesis, slightly or not dilated toward apex, throat glabrous or occasionally pubescent, the lobes usually thick, ovate, 1.6–3 mm long at anthesis, reflexed; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments of staminate flowers ca. 1 mm long, usually inserted on the corolla tube or throat; anthers attached at base, exserted at anthesis in functionally staminate flowers, oblong–ovate, ca. 1 mm long, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, erect, anatropous,1.2–2 mm long; style as many as carpels, 1.5–2.2 mm long, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, lobed or capitate, divaricate, up to 1.5 mm long, glabrous or pubescent, divergent in functionally pistillate flowers, appressed in functionally staminat flowers, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; orange; ovoid or obpyriform; glabrous or pubescent; 6–8(–10) mm long; including the collar-like persistent calyx at apex and the persistent disk; disk ± protruding from calyx; pyrenes hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; with T-shaped invaginations on the ventral surface; endosperm otherwise not ruminate; carnose; the embryo small with flat; thin cotyledons; seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in wet forest; sometimes in dry to mesic forest; on Moloka'i; Maui; and most common on Hawai'i.

Elevation Range: 460–1,370 m.