Heller : plants of the Hawaiian islands. 851 



Hibiscus arnottianus A. Gray. Bot, U. S. Expl. Exped. 

 15:176. 1854. 

 Gray describes this as "a shrubby species, several feet in 

 height, glabrous throughout, especially the leaves," and says 

 it was collected "on the Kaala mountaias behind Honolulu, 

 Oahu." This is a very strange statement, as Mt. Kaala is more 

 than twenty miles northwest of Honolulu. On the heights of 

 Pauoa, just back of Honolulu, where very likely the specimens 

 of Lay & Coolie, as well as those of the Exploring Expedition 

 were collected, I saw what passes for this species in Hille- 

 brand's Flora. The time was early in November, at the end of 

 the flowering season, when nearly all of the flowers had fallen, 

 and were rotting on the ground beneath the trees. It is a small 

 tree, or large shrub, with a short trunk, which branch.es free- 

 ly. The leaves are broadly ovate, entire, obtuse, or slightly 

 pointed, and rather prominently five nerved. Instead of being 

 smooth, the growing parts, at least, are pubescent with ful- 

 vous, stellate hairs. The calyx is broadly cylindrical, of an even 

 width throughout, pubescent. The pubescence is of two kinds, 

 some of the hairs being in short stellate tufts, while others are 

 several times longer, and more like spines. The calyx lobes 

 are short, slender pointed, from a broad triangular base. The 

 seven involucral bracts are more than half the length of the 

 calyx. The large white flowers are decidedly pubescent on the 

 outside. The only thing about this plant, so far as I can find, 

 which answers to the description of H. arnottianus by either 

 Gray or Hillebrand, is the long staminal column. Gray's type 

 is a specimen collected by Diell, presumably at Byron's Bay, 

 island of Hawaii, and the flowers are said to be red. Judging 

 from the literature at hand, Gray, in his description, must have 

 confused this white flowered Oahu form with the red flowered 

 one since described by Hillebrand as Hibiscus KoJcio. However 

 matters may be, the type is the plant collected by Diell, and it 

 now seems as though the Oahu plant is an undescribed species. 



Hibiscus Waimeae n. sp. (Plate Lin.) 



A tree, twenty or twenty-five feet high, with close gray bark; 

 trunk with a diameter of six inches or more, branched only 

 near the top; branches far spreading and slightly drooping; 

 leaves almost orbicular, with an average diameter of two inches, 

 pale green, crenate, pubescent on both sides, that of the upper 

 side scattered and short, that of the lower side very close and 

 thick, velvety to the touch; petioles pubescent, about half the 



