Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub.

Stems: Stems woody, decumbent, 3–8 dm long, leafy in upper ½.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear or narrowly elliptic, 8–20 cm long, 0.5–2 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Surfaces glabrous, slightly paler on lower surface. Margins minutely callose–denticulate, flat. Sessile to subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences 2–6–branched at base, 15–25 cm long, pedicels 15–30 mm long, glabrous, bracts linear and 14-16 mm long, or narrowly elliptic and 30–60 mm long; hypanthium obconical, 4–10 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx lobes 5, 14–16 mm long, sepals connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dorsally cleft almost to base, blue, 18-26 mm long, 3-4 mm wide, the lobes spirally revolute, tube suberect. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; staminal column sparsely pubescent; anthers 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 ovoid; 6–12 mm long; dehiscent at apex by 2 valves. Seeds numerous; brownish; 0.5 mm long; smooth; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring on cliffs in wet forest; Moloka'i.

Elevation Range: 1,000–1,200 m.