32. Ilex excelsa (Wallich) Wallich, Numer. List. no. 4328. 1831.
高冬青 gao dong qing
Trees evergreen, ca. 10 m tall; bark gray-brown, smooth. Current year’s branchlets glabrous or puberulent, longitudinally ridged; older branchlets gray, rugose, angular, scabrous, with raised, elliptic lenticels and raised leaf scars; terminal buds poorly developed, with loose glabrous scales. Stipules lanceolate, 1-1.5 mm; petiole 1-2 cm, slender, glabrous, narrowly sulcate adaxially; leaf blade brown-olivaceous when dry, elliptic, oblong, or ovate-elliptic, 5-10 × 2-4(-5) cm, papery or subleathery, midvein impressed adaxially, lateral veins 7 or 8 pairs, raised abaxially, distinct adaxially, furcate and anastomosing near margin, reticulate veins obscure adaxially, evident abaxially, base cuneate or obtuse, margin entire, apex acuminate. Inflorescences: cymes of order 2 or 3(or 4), 3-5(-15)-flowered, solitary, axillary on current year’s branchlets; flowers 4-6-merous. Male inflorescences: peduncles 4-8 mm, hirsute, base with deltoid, acute bracts; pedicels 2-5 mm, puberulent; bracteoles 1 or 2, basal; calyx patelliform, glabrous, shallowly 4- or 5-lobed, lobes orbicular, not ciliate; corolla rotate, ca. 5 mm in diam., petals oblong, ca. 2 mm, not ciliate, basally slightly connate; stamens equal or slightly longer than petals, anthers oblong; rudimentary ovary pulvinate, rostellate, apex 5-lobed. Female inflorescences: peduncles 5-12 mm; pedicels 3-4 mm, puberulent throughout; bracteoles ovate-deltoid, glabrous; calyx ca. 2.5 mm in diam., 5- or 6-lobed, lobes deltoid, not ciliate; corolla ca. 5 mm in diam., petals broadly ovate, ca. 2 mm; staminodes ca. 1/2 as long as petals, sterile anthers sagittate; ovary ovoid, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., stigma discoid. Fruit red, ovoid-ellipsoidal, ca. 5 mm, 4-4.5 mm in diam., longitudinally angular and sulcate when dry; persistent calyx explanate, 2-2.5 mm in diam., shallowly 6-lobed, lobes suborbicular; persistent stigma thickly discoid, convex; pyrenes (4 or)5(or 6), ellipsoidal, ca. 2.7 mm, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., abaxially smooth, or 2- or 3-striate, not sulcate, endocarp leathery. Fl. Apr-Jun, fr. Aug-Nov.
Sparse forests in mountain valleys, thickets; 800-2800 m. SE Guangxi, Yunnan [Bangladesh, Bhutan, N and NE India, Nepal].
