窄叶油茶 zhai ye you cha

Shrubs 1.5-3.5 m tall. Young branches grayish brown; current year branchlets purplish red, puberulent, soon glabrescent. Petiole puberulent; leaf blade lanceolate to narrowly lanceolate, 5-8.5 × 1-2.2 cm, leathery, abaxially pale green, adaxially dark green and shiny, both surfaces glabrous, midvein raised on both surfaces, secondary veins 6 or 7 on each side of midvein, secondary and reticulate veins abaxially obscure and adaxially impressed, base cuneate, margin serrulate, apex long acuminate. Flowers axillary or subterminal, solitary, 1.5-6 cm in diam., subsessile. Bracteoles and sepals 8 or 9, caducous; outer 3 or 4 bracteoles and sepals semiorbicular, 1.5-2 mm; inner bracteoles and sepals ovate, 4-6 mm, outside apically pubescent, inside glabrous, margin ciliolate. Petals 5 or 6, white, almost distinct, oblong-elliptic to oblanceolate, 0.8-3 × 0.4-2 cm, apex rounded to slightly emarginate. Stamens 5-7 mm, glabrous; outer filament whorl basally connate for 1.5-2 mm. Ovary globose, yellow tomentose, 3-loculed; styles 3, ca. 4 mm, glabrous, distinct nearly to base. Capsule ovoid, 1.5-1.7 cm, 1- or 2-loculed with l seed per locule; pericarp splitting into 3 valves. Seeds brown, globose, ca. 1 cm in diam. Fl. Oct-Feb, fr. Sep-Oct. 2n = 30.

Forests, thickets along valleys; below 100-500 m. Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan [NE India, N Myanmar].