Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Unarmed shrubs 2–4 m high, many-branched from the base with many basal shoots.

Stems: Stems light brown, erect to arching, up to 6m long, sometimes leaning on adjacent vegetation, often rooting where in contact with soil, leaf scars subcircular to broadly obovate–depressed, latex white.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves clustered near the end of the branches. Blades elliptic, oblong, or elliptic–oblong, in adult plants blade 19–30 × 5–7 cm. Apex attenuate, acuminate, or cuspidate. Base attenuate to cuneate, often asymmetrical. Surfaces light green when fresh, glabrous; upper surfaces moderately glossy, drying membranaceous to chartaceous, juvenile plants occasionally minutely muricate adaxially along costa; blades fleshy. Margins entire to minutely serrulate–dentate, often undulate when fresh, sometimes coarsely serrate–dentate in juvenile plants. Petioles 5–10 cm long, glabrous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary inflorescences and on leafless nodes, developing along stems after leaves have fallen on well developed individuals, up to 30 per stem, mostly perpendicular to the stem, 5–20 flowered, peduncles 15–70 mm long, glabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes 2–3 × 0.5–0.7 mm, lanceolate to linear, apex acute to acuminate, caducous in fruit. Corolla white, tubular, round in cross section, gently curved to suberect, 28–35 × 3–4 mm, externally glabrous, internally minutely papillose, the tube 23–27 mm long, the lobes 5–10 mm × 0.5–0.9 mm medially, linear–subulate, reflexed, initially ⅓ to ⅔ as long as the tube but eventually splitting more deeply. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes, connate; staminal column glabrous; anthers 6–7 mm long, glabrous, the lower 2 with apical tufts of white hairs 3–4 mm long. Ovary inferior, 2-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma 2-lobed, wet or dry, 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: Fruit bright orange when ripe; 8–10 mm in diameter; globose to obovoid; smooth; apex crowned by an apicular ring; calyx lobes caducous very early when fruits still small and green; old infructescences often producing leaves and continuing to develop as lateral shoots. Seeds numerous; embedded in translucent pulp; ovoid–ellipsoid; 0.5–0.6 × 0.35–0.4 mm; seed coat brown; shiny; smooth with faint striations.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurs in riparian sites; on talus or basalt boulder–strewn slopes along perennial streams. The plant community represents a Metrosideros lowland wet forest.

Elevation Range: 732–914 m.