假香冬青 jia xiang dong qing

Trees evergreen, 7-10 m tall, glabrous throughout; bark gray-brown, smooth, fissured. Young branchlets yellowish or brown, longitudinally angular and sulcate, second to third year’s branchlets longitudinally fissured, with raised leaf scars, lenticels absent. Petiole 1-1.2 cm, abaxially rounded, transversely rugose, adaxially sulcate; leaf blade olivaceous on both surfaces when dry, elliptic, oblong, or oblong-elliptic, 6-12 × 2-4 cm, papery to thinly leathery, midvein impressed adaxially, lateral veins (7-)11 pairs, raised on both surfaces, furcate and anastomosing near margin, reticulate veins slightly raised on both surfaces, base obtuse or subrounded, margin serrate, slightly recurved, apex acuminate to caudate-acuminate, acumen 1-2 cm. Inflorescences: cymes, fasciculate, axillary on current year’s branchlets; flowers 4-merous. Male inflorescences: cymes of order 1 or 2, 1-3-flowered; peduncles very short; pedicels 1-2 mm, glabrous; calyx patelliform, glabrous, ca. 2.5 mm in diam., 4-lobed, lobes ovate-deltoid, apex acute, ciliate; corolla rotate, ca. 5 mm in diam., petals oblong-obovate, ciliate, basally slightly connate; stamens ca. as long as petals, anthers oblong; rudimentary ovary subglobose, apex depressed, stigma distinctly 4-lobed. Female flowers not known. Infructescences: 1-fruited cymes; fruiting pedicels 2-3 mm; bracteoles 1 or 2, median, glabrous. Fruit subglobose, ca. 6 mm, ca. 7 mm in diam.; persistent calyx explanate, suborbicular, ca. 2.5 mm in diam., ciliate; persistent stigma discoid or navel-like; pyrenes 4, obovoid-oblong, ca. 4 mm, ca. 3 mm in diam., both ends obtuse or rounded, abaxially palmately 5-striate and sulcate, laterally striate and sulcate, endocarp stony. Fl. (Feb-)Jun-Jul, fr. Aug-Oct.

Forests, mountain slopes; 2100-3000 m. SW Yunnan [NE India].