Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect unbranched shrub 1 to 3 m tall.

Stems: Stems woody, erect, 10–30 dm long, with a dense apical rosette of leaves.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades elliptic, 40–60 cm long, 4–6 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces densely grayish or greenish hirsute. Margins callose–denticulate, revolute. Sessile or subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 3–5–branched from base, 100–150 cm long, pubescent, pedicels 10–20 cm long, bracts linear, 20–40 mm long, 2–3 mm wide, apex acuminate; hypanthium obconical to obovoid, 4–6 mm long, pubescent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes linear, acute, 12–18 mm long, 2–3 mm wide, sepals connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dorsally cleft almost to base, pale blue, 42-45 mm long, 4-5 mm wide, pubescent or glabrous, the lobes spirally revolute, tube suberect. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; staminal column pubescent; anthers pubescent or glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs, 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, often crowned with an annular nectary disk; ovule placentation axile, or when 1-celled with 2 parietal placentas; stigmas wet or dry, 2-lobed, 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: Capsules obovoid; 10–17 mm long; 8–10 mm wide; pubescent; dehiscent at apex by 2 valves. Seeds numerous; smooth; brownish; 0.5 mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring in cloudswept wet forest; on the windswept summit of the Ko'olau Mountains; O'ahu.

Elevation Range: 850–920 m.