福建冬青 fu jian dong qing

Shrubs evergreen, 3-4 m tall, glabrous throughout or puberulent on current year’s branchlets and pedicels. Branchlets gray, terete, slender, longitudinally fissured and rugose, lenticels absent; current year’s branchlets longitudinally striate and sulcate; terminal buds conical, glabrous. Stipules deltoid, minute, apically acute; petiole 5-7 mm, shallowly sulcate, distal half rugose, winged by decurrent leaf blade; leaf blade brown-olivaceous when dry, opaque on both surfaces, ovate, ovate-oblong, ovate-elliptic, or elliptic-lanceolate, 5-10 × 1.5-3.5 cm, leathery, both surfaces glabrous, midvein deeply impressed adaxially, lateral veins 9 or 10 pairs, anastomosing near margin, obscure on both surfaces, reticulate veins obscure abaxially, evident adaxially, base rounded, rarely obtuse, margin entire, apex caudate-acuminate, acumen 8-15 mm. Inflorescences: cymes, fasciculate, axillary on second year’s branchlets; basal bracts leathery, tricuspidate; flowers 4-merous. Male inflorescences: cymes of order 2 or 3, 3-5-flowered; peduncles 3-5 mm; pedicels ca. 3 mm; bracteoles 2, basal, or absent; calyx patelliform, ca. 2.5 mm in diam., glabrous, 4-lobed, lobes deltoid-ovate, margin erose, ciliate; corolla rotate, ca. 4 mm in diam., petals ovate, 2-2.5 mm, basally rather connate; stamens nearly as long as petals; rudimentary ovary pulvinate, rostellate. Female inflorescences: 1-flowered cymes; pedicels ca. 5 mm; bracteoles 2, basal, apex acute, ciliate; calyx and corolla as in male flowers; staminodes ca. 1/3 as long as petals, sterile anthers sagittate, glabrous, apex apiculate; ovary subglobose, styliferous, stigma capitate, 4-lobed. Fruit globose, ca. 5 mm in diam.; persistent calyx explanate, ca. 3 mm in diam.; persistent stigma discoid; pyrenes 2, ovoid, ca. 2.5 mm, ca. 2 mm in diam., abaxially reticulately striate, not sulcate. Fl. Apr-Jun, fr. Aug-Oct.

● Forests, thickets on mountains; 600-900 m. Fujian.

There are two forms distinguishable by the indumentum of the current year’s branchlets: f. fukienensis has glabrous branchlets, while f. puberula C. J. Tseng & H. H. Liu (Bull. Bot. Res., Harbin 1(1-2): 34. 1981) has puberulent branchlets.