Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Gnarled shrubs 6–12 dm tall, pubescent with simple hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or rarely opposite; crowded at the ends of the branches. Blades spatulate to oblong–elliptic or elliptic, 2–6–6 cm long, ca. 0.8–1.8 cm wide. Surfaces glabrous, blades coriaceous. Margins serrate nearly to base. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers usually bractless in 1–3 erect, simple racemes 7–15 cm long at maturity, moderately puberulent. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or rarely slightly irregular; white, pale yellow, or greenish, usually 2–3 mm long, sometimes absent. Calyx of 4 sepals, deciduous, erect, usually oblong, sometimes the inner 2 with gibbous bases that hold the nectar; ca. 1–1.2 mm long, puberulent, margins white. Corolla of 4 petals, rarely absent, yellow, white, or lavender, entire to emarginate, rarely lobed or fimbriate, usually with an elongate claw; 2–2.5 mm long. Stamens 6, as long or nearly as long as petals, the inner 4 usually in pairs, sometimes connate at base in pairs; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2(4?)-carpellate, usually 2-celled by means of a false, but usually complete septum, rarely 1-celled, sessile or rarely stipitate; ovules 1 to numerous, borne on parietal placentas on replum margin at periphery of ovary wall, campylotropous or occasionally anatropous; styles short or essentially absent; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Capsules divided into 2 cells by the usually thin and membranous septum; elongate (at least 3 times as long as wide) and referred to as a silique; flattened at right angles to the septum; broadly ovate to suborbicular; 3.5–4 mm long and wide; apex notched. Seeds 1 to numerous; reddish brown; narrowly obovoid; compressed; 1.5–2 mm long; 0.8–1 mm wide; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occuring in open; dry ridges; from scattered localities nearly throughout the leeward side of the Waia‘nae Mountains; O‘ahu.

Elevation Range: 330–520 m.