鳞片水麻 lin pian shui ma

Debregeasia spiculifera Merrill.

Shrubs, 1-2 m tall, monoecious. Branches stout, leaf scars conspicuous; branchlets greenish, aging brown, branchlets and branches with fleshy, spreading scale-like protuberances or warts and mixed appressed hairs; protuberances fleshy, ± recurved, 2-5 mm, hairs of branchlets and stipules reddish brown, appressed. Stipules lanceolate, 7-8 mm, 2-cleft in distal 1/3; petiole 2.5-7(-14) cm; leaf blade abaxially greenish gray, adaxially dark green, ovate or cordate, 6-16(-22) × 4-12(-18) cm, thinly papery, 3-veined, lateral ones arcuate, reaching to distal 1/4, anatsomosing with lowest of secondary veins 3-5 on each side distally, abaxial surface thinly tomentose, adaxial surface sparsely appressed strigose, sometimes rugose, sparsely appressed pubescent on veins, base rounded or cordate, margin denticulate, apex shortly acuminate. Inflorescences borne on current and previous years’ branches, 2-3-dichotomously branched, 1-3 cm; peduncle ca. 0.5 cm, spreading hirtellous; glomerules globose, 3-4 mm in diam.; bracts triangular-lanceolate, 0.6-1 mm, membranous, densely pubescent abaxially. Male flowers shortly pedicellate, globose in bud, ca. 1.2 mm in diam.; perianth lobes 3(or 4), broadly ovate, puberulent abaxially, connate at middle, acute; rudimentary ovary stipitate, obovoid, ca. 0.6 mm. Female flowers sessile, obovoid, ca. 0.6 mm; perianth tube membranous, 4-ribbed, 4-denticulate at apex. Achene ca. 1 mm, enclosed by membranous perianth but not adnate to it. Fl. Aug-Oct, fr. Oct-Dec(-Jan).

Thickets, valleys, shady, wet places; 100-1500 m. SW Fujian, Guangxi, Guangdong, S Guizhou, Hainan, S Yunnan [Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam; N Borneo].