乌材 wu cai

Trees or shrubs, 2.5--15 m tall, evergreen, many parts rusty strigose. Trunk to 30 cm d.b.h. Branches glabrescent. Winter buds ovoid, scales brown strigose with a glabrous margin. Petiole 5--6 mm, densely brown strigose; leaf blade oblong-lanceolate, 5--15 X 1.8--4 cm, papery, glabrous except for brown strigose hairs on midrib and abaxially on larger veins, drying abaxially brown and adaxially often blackish or grayish, base rounded to cuneate, apex acuminate, lateral veins 4--7(or 8) per side, reticulate veinlets mostly transverse and abaxially inconspicuously raised to ± invisible. Male flowers in 1--3-flowered cymes, subsessile, base of calyx concealed by overlapping ovate bracts; calyx lobes 4; corolla white, narrowly urn-shaped, 1--1.2 cm overall, outside densely strigose, inside glabrous; corolla lobes 4, lanceolate, 4--5 X ca. 2.5 mm, apex long-acuminate to caudate; stamens 14--16. Female flowers solitary; pedicel very short; calyx ca. 5 mm; calyx lobes 4, both surfaces strigose; corolla creamy white, salver-shaped; corolla lobes 4, outside strigose, inside glabrous; staminodes 4--8; ovary densely strigose; styles strigose at base. Fruiting calyx 0.8--1.2 cm, sparsely strigose; lobes 4, erect to spreading, lanceolate to ovate, 6--8 X 4.5--7 mm, apex subacute. Berries purple, ovoid, 1.2--1.8 X 0.5--0.8 cm, 4-locular, strigose, slightly glabrescent. Seeds 4. Fl. Jul-Aug, fr. Oct-Feb.

Open to dense forests, slopes or in valleys; 0-500 m. Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Taiwan [Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam].