Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, small or rarely up to 20 m tall.

Stems: Branches yellowish to dark brown.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades narrowly oblanceolate to obovate, 5–13 cm long, 1.5–6 cm wide. Apex acute to obtuse or rounded, usually with an obtuse, abrupt point. Base usually acuminate or attenuate. Lower surfaces usually glabrous except for the domatia; coriaceous, domatia usually very conspicuous, up to 3 mm long (particularly in the Kaua'i and some O'ahu representatives), and usually filled with whitish hairs. Margins entire. Lateral veins 7–12 pairs, marginal ribs often developed. Petioles 0.5–3.3 cm long. Stipules broadly ovate to obovate, up to 10 mm long, often as wide as long or wider.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences with 1 main axis and 2–3 nodes of usually verticillate branching, usually not pendent, branches 2–22 mm long, those of the upper node or nodes much smaller than those of the lowermost node, peduncles robust, 1.2–6.2 cm long. Flowers insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual, usually heterostylous, 4–6-merous. Calyx 4-6-lobed, usually thick and fleshy, 1.5–4 mm long, the tube usually shorter than hypanthium, somewhat or not at all dilated toward apex, glabrous, truncate or with obsolete lobes. Corolla white, 4-6-lobed, tube 1–2.5 mm long, barely or not at all expanded toward apex, throat glabrous or pubescent, the lobes usually thick and fleshy, broadly ovate, shorter than tube, reflexed; nectary disk present at apex of ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments usually inserted on the corolla tube or throat; filaments of staminate flowers up to 1 mm long at anthesis; anthers attached at base, exserted at anthesis in functionally staminate flowers, ovate–oblong, 1–1.2 mm long, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–celled; ovules 1 per cell, placentation basal, erect, anatropous, usually turbinate, 1.2–2.5 mm long; style 1 or as many as carpels, 0.5–0.8 mm long, terminal, slender; stigmas 2, lobed or capitate, thick, about as long as style or slightly smaller, glabrous or papillose, divergent in functionally pistillate flowers, appressed in functionally staminate flowers, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; orange; pyriform to oblong–globose; 10–12 mm long; pyrenes 1-2(-4); hemispherical in cross section; endocarp usually thick and hard. Seeds 1 per pyrene; usually conforming to the form of the pyrene; seed coat thin; usually with a T-shaped invagination 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 mesic to wet forest.

Elevation Range: (60–)180–1,220 m.