鸡眼藤 ji yan teng

Lianas, climbing, twining, or prostrate; branches surrounded at base by persistent leafless stipules, when young glabrous, puberulent, or densely hispidulous-hirtellous, becoming weakly angled, brown to slightly purplish blue. Leaves opposite; petiole 3-8 mm, glabrous, puberulent, or hispidulous-hirtellous; blade drying papery, on both surfaces matte and yellowish green, yellowish brown, or yellowish gray, obovate, linear-oblanceolate, sublanceolate, obovate-oblanceolate, oblanceolate, or obovate-oblong, 2-5(-7) × 0.3-3 cm, both surfaces glabrous or infrequently moderately to sparsely hirsute or hirtellous, base cuneate to acute, apex acute, obtuse, or rounded and shortly abruptly acuminate or mucronulate; secondary veins 3 or 4(-6) pairs, with pilosulous domatia; stipules fused into a spathe or tube, 2-4 mm, membranous, glabrous, puberulent, or hispidulous, truncate and on each side with 1 or 2, sometimes caducous bristles 0.5-1 mm. Inflorescence terminal; peduncles (2 or)3-9, umbellate to fasciculate, 0.6-2 cm, densely puberulent to hispidulous, as a group often subtended by 1 to several stipuliform bracts; heads 1 per peduncle, subglobose, oblate, conical, or rarely cylindrical, 5-8 mm in diam., 3-15(-17)-flowered, often with 1 to several linear bracts 0.5-1 mm. Flowers fused at base, biology not noted. Calyx puberulent to glabrescent; limb 0.5-0.8 mm, truncate to sinuate or denticulate. Corolla white, campanulate, outside puberulent to glabrous; tube 1.5-2 mm, inside densely villous from middle to throat; lobes 4 or 5, narrowly oblong, 3-4 mm, apically thickened and rostrate. Drupecetum subglobose to oblate, 6-15 mm in diam. Drupes fully fused, orange, subglobose, 4-5 mm. Fl. Apr-Jun, fr. Jun-Aug.

Thickets at roadsides or ditch sides, prostrate on bare land, thickets or forests on hills; sea level to 400 m. Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Jiangxi, Taiwan [Philippines, Vietnam].

Y. Z. Ruan (in FRPS 71(2): 194. 1999) commented that leaf shape in this species varies based to some degree on ecology, with obovate and dimorphic leaves in dry, sunny, bare habitat; linear-oblanceolate or sublanceolate leaves in shady, dry, bare habitat; and obovate-oblanceolate, oblanceolate, or obovate-oblong leaves when climbing on shrubs.