Polynesian Species of Myopomm — Webster 
read and criticized the manuscript. I also wish 
to thank Miss Marie Neal for making avail- 
able the facilities of the Bishop Museum 
Herbarium, Miss Mary Lou Jeffrey and Mr. 
William L. Brudon for drawing the illustra- 
tions, and the curators of the herbaria listed 
below for the loan of specimens: 
Bishop Museum, Honolulu (BISH) ; Bois- 
ser Herbarium, Geneva (G-BOIS); Otto 
Degener, personal herbarium (DEG) ; Deles - 
sett Herbarium, Geneva (G-DEL) ; Gray 
Herbarium (GH); Royal Botanic Gardens, 
Kew (K) ; New York Botanical Garden (NY) ; 
Laboratoire de Phanerogamie, Paris (P) ; Riks- 
museum, Stockholm (S) ; University of Texas, 
Austin (T) ; Naturhistorisches Museum, Vien- 
na (W). 
TAXONOMIC POSITION 
The genus Myoporum consists of about 30 
species scattered over a wide area including 
Mauritius, Australia, New Zealand, New 
Guinea, China, Japan, Micronesia, and Poly- 
nesia. It is characterized by its relatively 
actinomorphic corolla and its fleshy drupe 
with usually solitary ovules in the cells. Like 
other genera in the Myoporaceae, Myoporum 
has axillary flowers, stamens with confluent 
anther cells, pendent anatropous ovules, and 
gland-dotted, alternate leaves. The Verbe- 
naceae is probably the most closely related 
family, but it is well distinguished by its 
ovules which are not apically attached and 
by its opposite leaves which lack internal 
secretory tissue (Solereder, 1899: 711). 
The Polynesian species of Myoporum be- 
long to section Fentacoelium of Gray (1866: 
51), which has priority over the more ap- 
propriate name Eumyoporum of Bentham 
(1870: 2). Wettstein (1895: 360) distinguish- 
ed three sections which contained Pacific 
insular species — Pentacoelium, Polycoelium, and 
Eumyoporum — but there is no justification for 
placing these insular species in more than 
one section. Kraenzlin’s sections (1929: 15) 
are even more poorly founded, so it seems 
53 
that so far no really satisfactory subdivision 
of the genus has been made. 
The Hawaiian species M. sandwicense was 
apparently first collected by Archibald Men- 
zies on Vancouver’s expedition and was at 
first referred to the New Caledonian M. 
tenuifolium by Hooker and Arnott (1841: 93). 
It was described as a new species, Poly- 
coelium sandwicense^ by De Candolle (1847: 
705) and was redescribed in the genus 
Myoporum by Asa Gray (1866: 52), No other 
name was officially proposed for any of the 
Hawaiian plants until Leveille (1912: 63) 
published M. Fauriei based on a Faurie 
specimen from the island of Hawaii. Kraenz- 
lin (1929: 21)reduced the species to a variety 
but appears to have misapplied the name to 
specimens of var. sandwicense. 
Hugh Cuming had collected Myoporum in 
the Austral Islands (Tubuai) in 1828, but 
over a hundred years went by before any new 
species were described from southern Poly- 
nesia. Cheeseman (1903: 291) listed as 
Myoporum sp. a Mangaian plant cultivated 
on Rarotonga. Wilder (1931: 100) referred 
the Rarotongan plant to M. sandwicense, but 
Skottsberg (1933: 165) described it as a new 
species — M. Wilderi—'a.n^. discussed its prob- 
able relationships to most of the other in- 
sular species. Two years later Brown (1935: 
277) published three species from the Austral 
Islands and Rapa. 
Variation in the Hawaiian myoporums has 
been discussed by Skottsberg in his paper on 
M. Wilderi and by Degener (1930: 261), 
but neither has published any new names 
although Degener illustrated a pubescent- 
leaved form and announced his intention of 
describing it in his Flora Hawaiiensis. 
MORPHOLOGICAL CRITERIA 
Because of the extreme polymorphism of 
many Hawaiian populations of Myoporum it 
is difficult to find morphological characters 
which do not vary as much between indi- 
viduals as between varieties. An accurate 
concept of the range of variation — arrived at 
