Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small succulent herbs.

Stems: Stems usually reddish, erect to ascending, 5–15 cm long, usually with short leafy side branches.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or sometimes compound. Opposite. Blades ovate to narrowly oblong, 1–3 mm long. Apex acute to subacute. Base leaves connate at base into a shallow cup around the stem. Surfaces often with a waxy bloom; blades fleshy. Margins entire. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers usually clustered in the leaf axils, peduncles very short at anthesis, usually elongating up to ca. 4 mm long in fruit. Flowers bisexual (perfect), minute, axillary, erect, 4-merous. Calyx (3)4(5)-lobed, 0.8–1.2 mm long, deeply cleft, the lobes ovate–lanceolate, apex acute to acuminate. Corolla of (3)4(5) petals (equal in number to sepals), distinct, lanceolate to linear–lanceolate, nearly as long as or shorter than calyx. Stamens as many as and alternate with the petals, in 2 whorls; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Follicles usually 4; narrowly ellipsoid. Seeds (1)2 per follicle; endosperm scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: presumably recently naturalized at Pōhakuloa Training Area; Hawai‘i.

Elevation Range: