勾儿茶 gou er cha

Shrubs scandent or climbing, to 5 m tall. Young branches glabrous; old branches yellow-brown, smooth, glabrous. Leaves alternate or fascicled on short shoots; petiole reddish, 1.2-2.6 cm, slender, glabrous; leaf blade grayish white abaxially, green adaxially, ovate-elliptic or ovate-oblong, 3-6 × 1.6-3.5 cm, thickly papery, abaxially sparsely puberulent in vein axils, adaxially glabrous, lateral veins 8-10 pairs, base rounded or subcordate, apex rounded or obtuse, often mucronulate. Flowers yellow or greenish, solitary or few in fascicles, sessile or shortly pedunculate, in short, branched, narrow cymose panicles at ends of lateral branches; rachis to 10 cm, glabrous; branches ca. 5 cm, sometimes in axillary, short racemes. Pedicel ca. 2 mm, glabrous. Calyx tube shallowly cup-shaped, glabrous; sepals broadly triangular, abaxially glabrous, adaxially slightly keeled. Petals hooded. Disk thick, fleshy, centrally distinctly convex. Ovary deeply immersed in disk but not fused to it; style cylindric, short; stigma 2- or 3-lobed. Drupe purple-red, turning black at maturity, cylindrical, 5-9 mm, 2.5-3 mm in diam., basally with persistent remnants of calyx tube and disk; fruiting pedicel ca. 3 mm. Fl. Jun-Aug, fr. May-Jun of following year.

● Mixed forests and thickets on slopes and in valleys; 1000-2500 m. Gansu, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan.