Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrub or tree minutely puberulent, glabrate; leaves, petioles, and branches glabrous.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades elliptic to ovate or obtuse. Margins entire. Petioles filiform, 9–21 mm long, 1 mm thick; base elliptical plates cuneate or subrounded at the apex, obtuse or rounded, 3.5–6.5 cm long and 2–3.5 cm wide, glabrous, the middle rib narrowly brown springing dorsally, lateral nerves ascending parallel to the surface, with a sublinear nucleus at a distance of 1 mm coalitis. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences axillary single–flowered cymes, up to 3.5 cm long in fruit, with a glabrous axes, peduncles 3–8 mm long, pedicels expanded below the calyx. Flowers perfect. Calyx of 4 sepals, imbricate. Corolla of 4 petals. Stamens 8. Ovary superior, 4-celled and 4-lobed, carpels connate, only slightly distinct at apex to almost entirely distinct; ovules 2 per cell, hemitropous, 1 ascending; style 1, terminating in 4 short stigmatic branches.

Fruit: Capsules ca. 25 mm diameter; deeply 4-lobed up to (⅔ – ¾) the length of the fruit; sparsely puberulent at the base; glabrescent; endocarp sparsely aggregated with hirtellus trichomes at dorsal sutures. Green maturing to green and red. Seeds ovoid; ca. 5–6 mm long; seed coat black.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Koolau Range; Kipapa Gulch; Waipio; on southerly ridge in woods. In wet areas.

Elevation Range: 450–750 m