小梾木 xiao lai mu

Cornus paucinervis Hance (1881), not Heer (1859, fossil); Swida paucinervis Soják.

Shrubs 1–3(–4) m tall. Bark blackish gray, smooth; young branches green or purplish red, 4-angled, with grayish short trichomes; old branches brown, glabrous. Leaves opposite; leaf blade elliptic-lanceolate or lanceolate, rarely oblong-ovate, 4–9(–10) × 1–2.3(–3.8) cm, papery, abaxially light green, with sparse white appressed deciduous short trichomes, veins (2 or)3(or 4), nearly straight and ascending below, arched inward near leaf margin, base cuneate, apex acuminate to obtuse-acuminate. Corymbose cymes 3.5–8 cm wide, pubescent with white appressed short trichomes. Pedicels 2–9 mm. Flowers white or yellowish white, 9–10 mm in diam. Calyx lobes lanceolate-triangular to acutely triangular, ca. 1 mm, conspicuously longer than disk. Petals narrowly ovate to narrowly triangular or lanceolate, ca. 6 × 1.8 mm. Stamens shorter than petals; anthers yellowish white, oblong-ovate. Style conspicuously clavate, ca. 3.5 mm; stigma punctiform or truncate. Fruit black at maturity, globose, ca. 5 mm in diam.; stones subglobose, ca. 4 mm in diam., inconspicuously 6-ribbed. Fl. Jun–Jul, fr. Oct–Nov.

Montane forests, thickets by streams, scrub, hillsides; sea level to 2500 m. Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan.