云南钩藤 yun nan gou teng

Woody vines or lianas, to 15-25 m tall. Young branches weakly quadrangular, ferruginous villous. Petiole glabrous or ferruginous hirtellous; leaf blade drying leathery, ovate, elliptic, or elliptic-oblong, 9-18 × 5-8 cm, both surfaces glabrous, base obtuse, apex shortly acuminate; secondary veins ca. 4 pairs; stipules caducous, suborbicular, 14-16 mm, rounded. Inflorescences axillary and sometimes terminal, with heads solitary, brown hirtellous; peduncle 30-35 mm; flowering heads 15-20 mm in diam. in bud. Flowers not seen. Fruiting head ca. 40 mm in diam.; pedicels 6-8 mm. Fruit pedicellate, fusiform, ca. 10 mm, brown hirtellous. Fl. Jul, fr. Jan.

● Forest margins, thickets. Yunnan (Xishuangbanna).

H. H. Hsue and H. Wu (in FRPS 71(1): 249. 1999) described the petioles as ferruginous pubescent, but the protologue description of this species says "petioli glabri nitiduli," though these "petioli" are described as structures belonging to "pedunculus communis" and may be pedicels rather than petioles.

The possibility cannot be completely excluded based on the information available that this name will be found synonymous with Uncaria gambir.