Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees, 2–7 m tall, terrestrial or epiphytic.

Stems: Stems branched repeatedly, spreading, light gray or light brown, glabrous or rarely pubescent, with numerous helically arranged leaf scars near apex, pith solid, latex white, viscous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades elliptic, 12–20 cm long, 3–5.4 cm wide. Apex acuminate. Base cuneate or attenuate, rarely obtuse or rounded. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous or pubescent; lamina coriaceous; upper surfaces dark green, glossy; lower surfaces very pale green, dull. Margins callose–crenulate. Petioles 3–5 cm long, glabrous or pubescent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences glabrous or pubescent; peduncle 1.6–2.8 cm long; pedicels 2.2–4.2 cm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1.4–1.8 cm long, 1.2–1.4 cm in diameter. Calyx synsepalous; tube adnate to the ovary, forming a hypanthium, hemispheric, obconic, obovoid, turbinate, or rarely oblong, smooth or with 10 longitudinal furrows, rarely muricate or with 10 longitudinal ridges; lobes 5, valvate, either less than 1⁄2 as long as the corolla, distinct or rarely connate at base, persistent, triangular or deltate, rarely oblong or ovate, firm, green, or as long as the corolla (rarely only ⅔ as long), connate for 1/5–⅘ their length, deciduous, mimicking the corolla in shape, texture, and color. Perianth 5.4–6.4 cm long, the apex acuminate in bud; tube 3.2–4.2 cm long, 0.9–1.6 cm in diameter; lobes 1.8–2.5 cm long, 4–5 mm wide. Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, included or exserted; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, purple, the 3 dorsal ones a little longer than the 2 ventral ones, the latter with tufts of stiff white trichomes at apex, otherwise glabrous, or sometimes pubescent along the sutures, rarely so on the surfaces, the tube 1.3–1.7 cm long, 3–4.5 mm in diameter, glabrous or pubescent; filaments connate above, free from the corolla, 3.7–5.5 cm long, magenta, glabrous. Pollen tricolporate, prolate, ellipsoidal. Ovary inferior, 2-carpellate, 2-loculed; ovule placentation axile, placentae large; style slender, terete (cylindrical), with a ring of stiff white hairs near apex; stigma 2-lobed, the lobes appressed and non–receptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out pollen, after which the stigmas spread and become receptive.

Fruit: Fruit unknown. Seeds numerous; tiny; dark brown or black; minutely foveate–reticulate; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Montane rain forests.

Elevation Range: Lānaʻi (800–900 m) and Maui (900–990 m).