Diospyros cardiophylla Merrill.

Shrubs or small trees, to 8 m tall, many parts conspicuously rusty strigose to pilose. Bark dark brown. Petiole 2--4 mm; leaf blade oblong, 5--14 X 2--6 cm, papery to thickly papery, abaxially reddish brown pilose on all veins and on margin, adaxially glabrous and usually drying gray brown but sometimes blackened, base truncate to cordate, apex acute to acuminate, lateral veins 7--10 per side and abaxially impressed, reticulate veinlets transverse and abaxially raised. Flowers solitary. Calyx lobes 4. Corolla salver-shaped, 7--10 mm, inside glabrous; lobes 4. Male flowers with 12 stamens. Female flowers with filiform staminodes; ovary strigose; styles 2. Fruit sessile. Fruiting calyx lobes 4, lanceolate, 7--10 X 3--4 mm, apex acute. Berries brown when dry, globose to ovoid, 1--1.5 cm, 4-locular, brown-pilose. Seeds 1--4, dark brown, ± 3-sided, ca. 8 X 3.7 X 3.2 mm, tip extended into a beak. Fl. Jun-Aug, fr. winter.

* Dense to open forests. Hainan (Leizhou peninsula).