Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, stout, fleshy perennial herbs 5–10 dm tall.

Stems:

Roots: Often with fleshy tuberous roots.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, lowermost sometimes subopposite. Blades fleshy, elliptic to obovate, 5–15 cm long, 1.5–5 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Base attenuate. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Short-petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in 2–5-branched, racemose inflorescences 3–20 cm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect); pedicels ca. 8–11 mm long, bracts subulate, ca. 4–6 mm long. Calyx of 2 sepals; sepals ca. 4–5 mm long, imbricate, deciduous. Corolla usually with 5 petals; petals yellow (in Hawai'i) or pink, obovate, up to 10 mm long, quickly withering, imbricate. Stamens 15–40; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2–3(–9)-carpellate, soon becoming 1-celled, placentation free-central; ovules numerous; style 1, 3–branched.

Fruit: Capsules pale yellow; ellipsoid; 1–celled; 6–7 mm long. Seeds reniform; compressed; ca. 1.2 mm long; the surface smooth; minutely tuberculate near margins; endosperm absent; starchy.

Ploidy: 2n = 48; 72

Habitat:

Elevation Range: