Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Vines.

Stems: Stems usually prostrate and often rooting near the nodes, thin and herbaceous, becoming woody toward base, glabrous or with a few scattered hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong–ovate to broadly ovate or sometimes (but not in hawai'i) orbicular to reniform, 1–10 cm long, rarely longer. Apex acute to obtuse, or retuse (not in Hawai'i), mucronulate. Base cordate. Surfaces glabrous, entire, undulate, angular– toothed, 3–lobed, or sometimes 5–7– lobed, blades blades thin and coriaceous to slightly fleshy. Margins entire. Petioles up to about as long as blades. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers usually solitary, axillary, pedicels 10–25 mm long, glabrous, sometimes in cymes, peduncles 1–3(–9) cm long, bracts scale-like to foliose. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, 5-merous. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, imbricate, unequal, outer ones coriaceous, oblong–elliptic or elliptic–ovate, shorter than inner ones, 6–10 mm long, glabrous, apex acute to obtuse, inner ones thinner with membranous margins, suborbicular or sometimes elliptic, 8–12 mm long, all sepals with a subterminal mucro, often somewhat enlarging in fruit but not markedly accrescent, persistent, occasionally accrescent. Corolla of 5 fused petals; petals lavender to pinkish purple, the tube darker, funnelform, 3–4.5 cm long. Stamens 5, distinct, included or rarely exserted; staminal filaments inserted on corolla tube base alternate with corolla lobes, glabrous in upper ½, pubescent in lower ½ with glandular hairs; anthers dithecal, usually linear or oblong, extrorse. Ovary superior, 2–4-carpellate, usually with as many cells, placentation basal or basal-axile; ovules 2(4, 6) per cell, or ovary 1-celled and ovules 4, these erect, anatropous; style 1, filiform, simple or bifid, or sometimes with 2 distinct style; stigma globose or 2–3-lobed, the lobes globose.

Fruit: Capsules brown; depressed–globose; 0.9–1 cm long; dehiscent by 4 valves or rarely 6 valves; or splitting irregularly. Seeds 1-4; rarely 6; black or brown; suborbicular; with a notch; 3.5–4 mm long; glabrous; endosperm absent or scanty; cartilaginous; cotyledons usually foliaceous.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Known from coastal sites.

Elevation Range: