Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Coarse herbs with leafy shoots 1–2 m tall.

Stems:

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, distichous. Blades ovate–elliptic, 20–45 cm long, 10–15 cm wide. Apex short-acuminate. Base rounded. Surfaces glabrous or sparsely pubescent along midrib on lower surface. Margins entire. Lateral veins parallel, diverging from prominent midrib. Petioles 1–2 cm long; ligules membranous, 1.5–3 cm long, entire or very shallowly 2–lobed, glabrate, sheaths glabrous or glabrate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences erect, cylindrical, 16–30(45) cm long, primary bracts widely spaced, ovate–elliptic, spreading or obliquely ascending, enfolding the cincinni, much shorter than the floral tube, 3–5 cm long, glabrous, rachis glabrous, exposed, cincinni 2–flowered. Flowers bisexual (perfect), zygomorphic, pedicellate. Calyx cylindrical, 3-lobed, the lobes unequal, 3–3.5 cm long. Corolla adnate with the stamens into a floral tube, distally 3-lobed; corolla lobes unequal, corolla yellow, the tube longer than the primary bract, 5–5.5 cm long, the lobes greenish yellow, linear, 3.5–5 cm long. Stamens 5, in 2 whorls, only the posterior one of the inner whorl fertile, the other 2 members of inner whorl connate to form a highly variable, often conspicuous labellum; labellum centrally tinged orange, 2.5–3 cm long; stamen bright reddish orange, far exceeding labellum, ca. 6.5 cm long; lateral staminodes yellow, ca. 3 cm long. Ovary inferior, with 2 variously developed apical nectary glands, 3-celled, sometimes incompletely so, rarely 1-celled, placentation axile, parietal (or essentially basal), or rarely free-central; ovules usually numerous; style filiform, often enveloped in a groove of the fertile stamen and embraced by the thecae; stigma various, often papillose and protruding beyond anther. Ovary glabrous.

Fruit: Capsules oblong; ca. 1.5 cm long; the valves orange within. Seeds red; 5–6 mm long.

Ploidy: 2n = 34; 54

Habitat: Naturalized at Koke'e; Kaua'i; Waikamoi and forest above Hana-Kipahulu; Maui; in Kaiholena Valley; Lānaʻi; and on Hawai'i; where it is a pest.

Elevation Range: