Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees, terrestrial or epiphytic.

Stems: Stems branched repeatedly, spreading, light gray or light brown, glabrous or rarely pubescent, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars near apex, pith solid, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong, elliptic, or oblanceolate. Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate, rarely obtuse or rounded. Base cuneate or attenuate, rarely obtuse or rounded. Surfaces glabrous or pubescent, rarely muricate; Blades coriaceous or chartaceous, rarely membranous; upper surfaces glossy or dull; lower surfaces dull, paler. Margins callose crenulate, rarely callose–serrulate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary, subumbellately racemose, 2(–10)–flowered, sometimes 1 flowered by abortion, glabrous or pubescent, rarely muricate; peduncle spreading, rarely deflexed or pendent, bibracteate; pedicels spreading, rarely ascending or pendent, bibracteolate. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Calyx synsepalous; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a hypanthium, hemispheric, obconic, obovoid, turbinate, or rarely oblong, smooth or with 10 longitudinal furrows, rarely muricate or with 10 longitudinal ridges; lobes 5, valvate, either less than 1⁄2 as long as the corolla, distinct or rarely connate at base, persistent, triangular or deltate, rarely oblong or ovate, firm, green, or as long as the corolla (rarely only ⅔ as long), connate for 1/5–⅘ their length, deciduous, mimicking the corolla in shape, texture, and color. Corolla bilabiate, unilabiate, tubular, or rotate, white, green, purple, rose, magenta, or maroon; tube suberect, curved, or arcuate, dorsally cleft to near the base; lobes 5, valvate, deflexed, erect, spreading, or recurved, 1/5–3 times as long as the tube. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, included or exserted; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, purple, magenta, or white, glabrous; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, purple or white, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, otherwise glabrous, or sometimes pubescent along the sutures, rarely so on the surfaces; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-carpellate, 2-loculed; ovule placentation axile, placentae large; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit an orange or yellow berry; subglobose; obovoid; ellipsoid; or oblong; rarely obpyriform or obconic; smooth or with 10 longitudinal furrows; rarely muricate or with 10 longitudinal ridges; pericarp thick; leathery; placentae juicy or spongy; apex truncate; crowned with a low circular rim and base of style. Seeds numerous; tiny; dark brown or black; minutely foveate–reticulate; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 14*.

Habitat:

Elevation Range:

Historical Distribution

Images

Accepted Subtaxa (in Hawai'i) (31)

Clermontia arborescens (H.Mann) Hillebr.

Clermontia arborescens subsp. waihiae × Clermontia kakeana

Clermontia arborescens × Clermontia kakeana

Clermontia calophylla E.Wimm.

Clermontia clermontioides (Gaudich.) A.Heller

Clermontia drepanomorpha Rock

Clermontia fauriei H.Lév.

Clermontia grandiflora Gaudich.

Clermontia grandiflora subsp. grandiflora × Clermontia micrantha

Clermontia hanaulaensis H.Oppenh., Lorence, & W.L.Wagner

Clermontia hawaiiensis (Hillebr.) Rock

Clermontia hawaiiensis × Clermontia parviflora

Clermontia kakeana Meyen

Clermontia kakeana × Clermontia micrantha

Clermontia kohalae Rock

Clermontia lindseyana Rock

Clermontia micrantha (Hillebr.) Rock

Clermontia montis-loa Rock

Clermontia montis-loa × Clermontia parviflora

Clermontia multiflora Hillebr.

Clermontia oblongifolia Gaudich.

Clermontia pallida Hillebr.

Clermontia parviflora Gaudich. ex A.Gray

Clermontia peleana Rock

Clermontia persicifolia Gaudich.

Clermontia pyrularia Hillebr.

Clermontia samuelii F.B.Forbes

Clermontia tuberculata C.N.Forbes

Clermontia waimeae Rock

Clermontia × leptoclada Rock

Clermontia × paradisia E.Wimm.

Uses and Culture

USES

For the treatment of cuts the sap is blended with the sap of ‘ulu (breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis) and powdered ‘ahakea (Bobea spp.). The application is followed by a wash with liquid from ‘aiea (Nothocestrum spp.) or possibly ‘auko‘i (Senna occidentalis). For hano (asthma) and forms of nae (shortness of breath), the mature fruit are mixed with green kukui fruit (Aleurites moluccana), ‘ōolena root (Curcuma longa), leaves and leaf buds of pawale (Rumex spp.), ‘ōhi‘a ‘ai bark (Syzygium malaccense), ‘ala‘alawainui pehu stems (Peperomia spp.), noni fruits (Morinda citrifolia), and kōhonua‘ula (red sugarcane, Saccharum officinarum). While on this medication patients consume fresh poi, ‘uala, lu‘au, fish, and kukui. To induce lactation, the sap is combined with with niu flesh (coconut, Cocos nucifera), ‘akoko leaves (Chamaesyce spp.), and kōkea (white sugarcane), and poured into an ‘ulua tuber, which is consumed (Chun 1994:221–222).
Fruit eaten raw (Degener 1930:288).