Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Reclining or sprawling vines.

Stems: Stems often swollen at the nodes, terete (cylindrical), 4–angled or –ridged, 3–7 dm long (in cultivation eventually to 15 dm or more long), conspicuously compressed–quadrangular, the angles weakly winged, pale yellowish green throughout or stems purple–tinged in lower portion of the plant (at least in cultivation), glabrous throughout, except sparsely puberulent at the base of the internodes of the inflorescence and on the margins and adaxial surface and margins of bracts and sepals.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades ovate to elliptic–ovate, 4–7.8 cm long, 1.7–3 cm wide. Apex acurninate to acute. Base leaf bases often connate around the stem, base acute to obtuse. Blades thinly coriaceous, with only the midvein evident. Margins very slightly thickened. Midvein ± slightly excentric, purple on lower leaves. Petioles 0.5–0.7 cm long, the base often slightly flared at juncture with stem and the leaf pair slightly connate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence terminal, with 12–50 flowers, 20–40 cm long, diffuse, the branches 8–20 cm long, each branch with 5–12 flowers, sparsely puberulent with translucent to whitish hairs 0.3–0.5 mm long at the base of the internodes of the inflorescence; bracts yellowish green, foliaceous, the lower ones foliaceous and nearly as large as the leaves, those in the upper part of the inflorescence and subtending the flower narrowly subulate, 3–5 mm long, ciliate and puberulent on the adaxial surface with hairs 0.1–0.2 mm long; pedicels 4–10 mm long at anthesis, elongating slightly in fruit, conspicuously asymmetrically flattened. Flowers bisexual (perfect), usually pendent, apparently facultatively autogamous. Sepals 3–4 mm long, lanceolate, dull yellowish green, purple–tinged, or purple, opaque, concave to shallowly navicular toward the apex, oriented at 90° to the pedicel at base, later in anthesis abruptly curved upward in upper 2/3 at 130° to 160° angle to the pedicel, often strongly inrolled during late– and post–anthesis, abaxially smooth and rounded, puberulent toward base, usually with scattered hairs primarily toward the margin, also adaxially moderately puberulent with hairs 0.1–0.2 mm long, margins weakly scarious, ciliate, apex attenuate. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 10; filaments dimorphic, the antisepalous whorl 3.5–4 mm long, the alternate whorl 2.4–2.8 mm long; anthers subequal, those of the antisepalous whorl 0.65 mm long, of the alternate whorl 0.55 mm long, yellow. Ovary superior, 1-celled; ovule placentation free-central; styles 3–4, the stigmatic area extending nearly the full length of the style.

Fruit: Capsules 3.5–4 mm long; ovoid. Seeds 9–20 per capsule; 1–1.3 mm long; reniform–suborbicular; compressed pale brown; the margins of the cells of the seed coat slightly convex; the raised cells forming low transverse ridges across the seed surface; perisperm starchy; hard or rarely soft; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: In a montane dry <i>Metrosideros polymorpha</i> forest with <i>Zanthoxylum hawaiiense; Dodonaea viscosa</i>; and <i>Tetramolopium consanguineum</i> on a pahoehoe lava flow about 1200 years old.

Elevation Range: ca. 1,640 m.