平核冬青 ping he dong qing

Shrubs evergreen. Second year’s branchlets gray-brown, terete, longitudinally fissured; current year’s branchlets gray-brown, ridged, puberulent or glabrescent; terminal buds conical, puberulent. Petiole 5-6 mm, puberulent or glabrescent; leaf blade abaxially brownish, adaxially olivaceous, shiny when dry, elliptic or oblong-elliptic, rarely ovate-elliptic, 7-8.5 × ca. 3 cm, papery, both surfaces glabrous, midvein raised on both surfaces, lateral veins 8-10 pairs, conspicuous abaxially, obscure adaxially, base obtuse, margin entire, apex abruptly caudate-acuminate, acumen 1-1.5 cm. Flowers not known. Infructescences: 1-fruited cymes, fasciculate, fascicles 4- or 5-fruited, axillary; fruiting pedicels 4-6 mm, puberulent; persistent bracteoles 2, basal, deltoid-ovate, puberulent. Fruit (immature) black when dry, globose, ca. 3 mm in diam.; persistent calyx 4-lobed, lobes deltoid or deltoid-ovate, puberulent, ciliate; persistent stigma thickly discoid or discoid; pyrenes 4, oblong, ca. 3 mm, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., abaxially smooth, not striate or sulcate, endocarp leathery. Fl. and fr. unknown.

● Forest margins or thickets on mountain slopes. Sichuan.