黄蜡果 huang la guo

Stauntonia dielsiana Y. C. Wu.

Plants large. Monoecious. Young branchlets green, striate, ca. 3 mm in diam.; old branches dark olive-green, with fusiform lenticels. Outer winter bud scales broad, imbricate; inner scales ligulate, ca. 4 cm long. Petiole 5--11 cm; leaf blade palmately 5--9-foliolate; petiolules 1--2.4 cm; leaflets spatulate, 5--13.5 × 2--5 cm, papery, both surfaces yellowish green, abaxially glaucous and densely minutely papillose but farinose white when dry, adaxially dark green and shiny but dull colored when dry, apex abruptly long caudate and with an easily broken, piliferous tip 2--5 mm; midvein abaxially slightly prominent and adaxially impressed in old leaves; secondary veins 6--10 pairs; tertiary veinlets and secondary veins anastomosing remote from margin, abaxially slightly prominent and adaxially impressed in old leaves. Racemes 1 to several, 4--8(--12) cm, 10- or more flowered, 1 or 2 flowers at each node; female flowers 2 or 3, inserted basally on rachis, subulate-lanceolate, ca. 1 cm; male flowers inserted apically; bracts persistent. Sepals whitish green when fresh, brown when dry, slightly fleshy, thicker in female flowers; outer 3 sepals ovate-lanceolate, 0.9--1.2 cm, apex narrowly rounded but cuneate and curved when dry; inner 3 sepals narrowly linear, shorter, adaxially papillose. Male flowers: filaments ca. 3.5 mm, connate into a tube; anthers ca. 2 mm, incurved; connective apical appendage apiculate, minute. Pistillodes minute. Female flowers: carpels ca. 5 mm. Stigma hypocrateriform. Fruit yellow at maturity, ellipsoid, 5--7.5 × 3--5 cm, smooth or tuberculate. Fl. Apr, fr. Aug--Nov.

* Mixed forest on mountain slopes; 500--1200 m. Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan.