Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Shrubs or trees, 1–6 m tall, terrestrial or rarely 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 4–12 cm long, 1.5–4.5 cm wide.
Apex acute, acuminate, or cuspidate, rarely obtuse or rounded.
Base cuneate or attenuate, rarely obtuse or rounded.
Lower surfaces glabrous or pubescent along the veins.
Margins callose crenulate, rarely callose–serrulate.
Petioles 0.8–2.8 cm long.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers in peduncle 2.2–8.5 cm long; pedicels 1.6–7 cm long.
Flowers bisexual (perfect), epigynous, zygomorphic, resupinate, protandrous. Hypanthium 1.1–1.6 (–1.8) cm long, 1.1–1.4 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 5.1–7 cm long, green, purple, maroon, or rose, often longitudinally striped, the calyx lobes sometimes as little as ⅔ as long as corolla; tube 2.8–6.4 cm long, 0.9–1.4 cm in diameter, curved, wider at middle than at base; lobes 0.9–1.7 (–2.1) cm long, 4–7 mm wide, suberect or slightly spreading.
Stamens 5, syngenesious, alternate with the corolla lobes, included or exserted; anthers connate, dithecal, opening introrsely by longitudinal slits, purple or white, 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; anther tube 1 1.4 cm long, 2.5–3.5 mm in diameter; filaments 4.8–6.4 cm long, connate above, free from the corolla, purple, magenta, or white, 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:
Berries 1.6–2.6 cm long; 1–2 cm in diameter; orange; obovoid or subglobose.
Seeds numerous; tiny; dark brown or black; minutely foveate–reticulate; shiny; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.
Ploidy:
2n = 14*.
Habitat:
Endemic to West Maui; montane bogs.
Elevation Range:
610–1750 m.