棱枝冬青 leng zhi dong qing

Shrubs or trees, evergreen, 4-10 m tall; bark gray-white. Branchlets zigzag, slender, ridged, narrowly sulcate, puberulent; older branchlets angular-ridged, fissured, with semicircular, slightly raised leaf scars; lenticels absent; terminal buds absent. Petiole 4-6 mm, adaxially sulcate; leaf blade brown-olivaceous when dry, elliptic or broadly elliptic, 3.5-5 × 1.5-2 cm, papery or membranous when young, both surfaces glabrous, midvein glabrous abaxially, impressed and glabrous or puberulent adaxially, lateral veins 5-7 pairs, slightly raised on both surfaces, furcate and anastomosing near margin, reticulate veins indistinct on both surfaces, base cuneate or acute, margin entire, slightly recurved, rarely apically sparsely serrulate, apex acuminate. Inflorescences: cymes of order 1 or 2, 1-3-flowered, solitary, axillary on current year’s branchlets; peduncles 3-5 mm, puberulent; bracts deltoid, sparsely puberulent; pedicels 3-5 mm; bracteoles 2, basal; 1-flowered pedicels ca. 1 cm; flowers pink, 5-merous. Male inflorescences often 3-flowered; calyx patelliform, 3-5 mm in diam., membranous, shallowly 5-lobed, lobes ovate, 1-1.5 mm, not ciliate, apex rounded; corolla rotate, 6-8 mm in diam., petals ovate, ca. 3 mm, basally slightly connate; stamens ca. 3/4 as long as petals, anthers oblong; rudimentary ovary globose, ca. 1 mm in diam. Female inflorescences: calyx and corolla as in male flowers; staminodes ca. 1/3 as long as petals, sterile anthers sagittate; ovary ovoid, stigma mammilliform. Fruit red, ellipsoidal, 6-8 mm, 5-6 mm in diam., longitudinally angular; persistent calyx explanate, ca. 3.5 mm in diam., lobes orbicular-ovate, not ciliate; persistent stigma capitate; pyrenes 5 or 6, ca. 5 mm, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., abaxially 3-striate and sulcate, middle ridge often deeply impressed, endocarp woody. Fl. Apr, fr. Jul-Oct.

● Thickets, sparse forests on mountains; 400-500 m. Guangxi, Hainan.