乳头冬青 ru tou dong qing

Trees or shrubs evergreen, 3-10 m tall. Current year’s branchlets slender, glabrous, with dense brownish rounded or elliptic lenticels; second year’s branchlets gray, subterete, with very dense lenticels. Petiole 3-7 mm, adaxially sulcate or subflat, puberulent or glabrescent; leaf blade narrowly elliptic, elliptic, or oblong-elliptic, rarely ovate-elliptic or oblong, 6-10 × 2-3.5 cm, leathery, abaxially glabrous, inconspicuously and minutely glandular punctate, adaxially glabrous except on midvein, midvein narrowly impressed and puberulent adaxially, lateral veins obscure abaxially, evident adaxially, base obtuse or cuneate, margin entire, apex acute or obtuse, rarely shortly acuminate or retuse. Male inflorescences: cymes of order 1 or 2(or 3), 1-3(or 4)-flowered, fasciculate, axillary on current year’s branchlets or on leaf scars of second or third year’s; peduncles 2-2.5 mm; pedicels 4.5-6 mm, puberulent; bracteoles basal, deltoid, puberulent; flowers 5-merous; calyx patelliform, 5-lobed, lobes deltoid-ovate, puberulent, ciliate; petals 5, broadly oblong, ca. 4 mm, basally slightly connate; stamens ca. as long as petals; rudimentary ovary ovoid. Female flowers not known. Infructescences: 1-fruited cymes, fasciculate, fascicles 3- or 4-fruited, axillary; fruiting pedicels 6-8 mm, puberulent; persistent bracteoles basal, deltoid, puberulent. Fruit red, globose, ca. 5 mm in diam.; persistent calyx 4- or 5-lobed, lobes broadly deltoid, puberulent, ciliate; persistent stigma mammilliform or cylindric; pyrenes 5, ellipsoidal, ca. 3 mm, ca. 2 mm in diam., abaxially striate, endocarp leathery. Fl. May, fr. Nov.

● Forests on hill slopes; 200-300 m. Guangxi, Yunnan.