大苞耳草 da bao er cao

Oldenlandia bracteosa (Hance) Kuntze.

Herbs, erect, to 50 cm tall; stems glabrous, 4-angled with angles rounded to acute or winged, wings to 1 mm wide. Leaves sessile or subsessile; blade drying papery, elliptic-oblong or oblong-lanceolate, 12-15 × 2-4 cm, glabrous, base obtuse to cordulate then abruptly narrowed, apex acute or shortly acuminate; secondary veins ca. 7 pairs, weakly marked or not visible; stipules fused to petiole bases, broadly triangular to ovate, 4-12 mm, glabrous, with 2 winged flanges 1-2.5 mm wide extending from each petiole base to apex, entire or glandular-serrulate, acute to acuminate. Inflorescence axillary, capitate, glabrous, pedunculate; peduncles 2.5-7 cm; involucral bracts 2 or 4, ovate, 10-25 × 9-18 mm; head hemispherical, 10-16 mm in diam.; floral bracts narrowly lanceolate, 1-4 mm; pedicels 0.2-1 mm. Flowers subsessile to shortly pedicellate, distylous. Calyx glabrous; hypanthium portion ellipsoid, ca. 1 mm; limb lobed nearly to base; lobes ovate or lanceolate, 2.2-3 × 1.2-2 mm, often pinnately veined, sometimes ciliolate, obtuse to acute. Corolla white, tubular or tubular-funnelform, outside glabrous; tube ca. 4 mm, pilosulous inside in upper half and throat; lobes lanceolate to triangular, ca. 1.5 mm, acute. Anthers exserted and ca. 0.8 mm in short-styled form, in long-styled form not seen. Stigmas ca. 0.5 mm and positioned near middle of corolla tube in short-styled form, ca. 1 mm and exserted in long-styled form. Fruit capsular, subglobose to ellipsoid, ca. 2 mm, glabrous, septicidal then perhaps rather tardily loculicidal, with calyx limb persistent; seeds numerous, black, angled, rugose. Fl. Apr-Jul, fr. Jul.

● Sparse forests on mountain slopes or on humid lands in valleys/ravines. Guangdong.

W. C. Ko (in FRPS 71(1): 56. 1999) described the corolla as having lobes as long as the corolla tube, but this has not been seen on specimens studied nor reported by other authors.