Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees 3–10 m tall. Apparently hemiparasitic on roots of other plants.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or rarely alternate. Blades ovate, elliptic, or obovate, (2.5–)5.5–6(–8) cm long, (2–)2.54.5 cm wide. Surfaces evergreen ± conspicuously discolorous; upper surfaces glossy orange or bluish green on upper surface; lower surfaces conspicuously paler, sometimes yellowish orange to bluish or olive green; blades coriaceous to chartaceous, brittle. Margins entire. Petioles 2–15 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal and ± axillary, compound cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), with a sweet fragrance, greenish in bud, about as long as wide. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla greenish, tinged with brown, orange, or salmon after opening, 4– 8 mm long. Stamens 4(5). Ovary inferior; stigma 2–4-lobed.

Fruit: Drupes purple to black at maturity; 10–12 mm long; with an apical receptacular ring. Seeds muricate; with pointed beak on one end.

Ploidy: 2n = 40*

Habitat: Scattered in dry woodland on lava or on cinder cones; to higher elevation wet forest or secondary <i>Metrosideros</i> forest.

Elevation Range: 450–2,000 (–2,550) m.