蔓虎刺 man hu ci

Mitchella repens Linnaeus var. undulata (Siebold & Zuccarini) Makino.

Plants with stems quadrate, to 30 cm, glabrous or subglabrous. Petiole 0.3-1.1 cm, glabrous or subglabrous; leaf blade drying papery, triangular-ovate or ovate, 0.2-2.1 × 0.2-1.5 cm, both surfaces glabrous, base truncate or cordulate to rounded, margins sometimes undulate, apex acute to rounded; secondary veins 2 or 3 pairs; stipules 1-1.5 mm. Flowers with peduncles 1-12 mm, glabrous. Calyx glabrous; ovary portion subglobose to turbinate, ca. 2 mm; limb deeply lobed; lobes narrowly to broadly triangular, 0.5-1 mm. Corolla glabrous outside; tube 9-10 mm; lobes lanceolate to triangular, 4-5 mm, acute. Multiple fruit subglobose, 6-8 mm in diam., glabrous; pyrenes ca. 2.5 mm. Fl. autumn, fr. winter.

Understories of wet forests. Taiwan, Zhejiang [Japan, Korea].

In Fl. Taiwan (ed. 2, 4: 297. 1998) Liu and Yang reported the plants there are evergreen. Y. Z. Ruan (in FRPS 71(2): 159. 1999) described the leaf blades as unequal and gave measurements for large ones and small ones without further explanation. All other authors reported this species to be generally isophyllous, which corresponds to specimens seen. The leaf description by Ruan may apply to the variable leaf sizes along the stems of some plants, rather than consistent size differences between the two leaves at a single stem node.