木姜冬青 mu jiang dong qing

Ilex editicostata Hu & T. Tang var. litseifolia (Hu & T. Tang) S. Y. Hu.

Shrubs to small trees, evergreen, 3-6 m tall. Current year’s young branchlets purple-black when dry, thinly angular; old branches gray-brown; lenticels sparse, obtuse; leaf scars subcircular, convex; terminal buds conical, ca. 5 mm, brown-yellow pilose. Petiole 1-2 cm, compressed, pilose, hairs deciduous; leaf blade abaxially greenish, adaxially green, elliptic-lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, 5-8 × 2-4 cm, leathery, both surfaces glabrous, midvein raised adaxially, brown-yellow pilose, glabrescent, lateral veins 7-9 pairs, raised on both surfaces, pilose, base cuneate to broadly cuneate, margin entire, slightly recurved, apex acuminate. Inflorescences: cymes, solitary, axillary on current year’s branchlets. Male inflorescences: cymes of order (2 or)3, (3-)5-7-flowered; peduncles 7-12 mm, brown-yellow pilose, glabrescent; bracteoles 1, basal, linear, ca. 2 mm, or absent; flowers white, 4-merous; calyx cup-shaped, ca. 1 mm in diam., shallowly 4-lobed, lobes orbicular, puberulent, ciliate; corolla rotate, ca. 4 mm in diam., petals obovate, ca. 3 × 1.5 mm, basally slightly connate; stamens ca. 1/2 as long as petals, anthers oblong. Female flowers not known. Infructescences: cymes of order 2, 1-3-fruited. Fruit red, globose, 5-7 mm in diam.; persistent calyx explanate, ca. 3 mm in diam., shallow lobes broadly orbicular, ciliate; persistent stigma thinly discoid, shallowly 4- or 5-lobed; pyrenes 5, ca. 5 mm, ca. 1.8 mm in diam., abaxially shallowly sulcate, laterally smooth, endocarp subleathery. Fl. May-Jul, fr. Aug-Nov.

● Evergreen broad-leaved forests, forest margins on mountain slopes; 700-1100(-2100) m. Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang.