5. album L. var. ellipticum (Gaud.) Meurisse; S. cuneatum (Hillebr.) Rock; S. c. f. gracilius Skottsb., nom. nud.; S. c. var. gracilius Skottsb.; S. c. var. lay- sanicum Rock; S. ellipticum var. gracilius (Skottsb.)
Degener; S. e. var. littorale (Hillebr.) Skottsb.; S. e. f. physophora Degener; S. freycinetianum Gaud. var. cuneatum Hillebr.; S. f var. ellipticum (Gaud.) A. Gray; S. f var. littorale Hillebr.; S. littorale (Hillebr.) Rock]
(end) ‘Iliahialo ‘e, coast sandalwood
Sprawling shrubs to small trees 1-5 m tall. Leaves dull grayish green on both surfaces, leathery to succulent and often glaucous, elliptic to orbicular, ovate, or obovate, 2.5-6.1 cm long, 1.7-4 cm wide, petioles 0-15 mm long. Flowers with a sweet fragrance, greenish in bud, about as long as wide, in terminal and ± axillary, compound cymes, pedicels 0-1 mm long; floral tube campanulate to conical; corolla greenish, tinged with brown, orange, or salmon after opening, 4-7 mm long; ovary inferior. Drupes purple to black at maturity, often glaucous, 9-12 mm long, with an apical receptacular ring. [2n = 40*.] Scattered on ridges, slopes, or gulches, often on (a‘a lava or rocky sites, in dry shrubland and forest, often persisting in areas invaded by exotics, 0-560(-950) m, on all of the main islands; now extinct on Kaho‘olawe and Laysan, rare on Kaua‘i, and on Hawai‘i known from the Kohala Mountains, Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a, North Kona District, Pu‘upapapa and several other of the nearby cinder cones, South Kohala District. A sin-gle specimen (Jacobi & Higashino 1352, BISH) collected between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa at ca. 2,140 m appears to be this species.—Plate 177.
Santalum ellipticum is an exceedingly variable species in both vegetative and floral characters. In all, 6 taxa have been proposed for plants belonging to S. ellipticum in the inclusive sense used here. No character or group of characters, however, allow for a finer subdivision of this species. The latest work by Stemmermann (1980a) recognizes var. littorale, a coastal form, based on leaf succulence, glaucous fruit, and shrubby habit; all of these characters can be found in other noncoastal plants, and the coastal form, although quite distinctive anatomically (Stemmermann, 1980b), merely represents an extreme end point of the variation pattern. This form, which apparently is for the most part ecologically induced, does not seem to warrant formal recognition.