小花粗叶木 xiao hua cu ye mu

Lasianthus balansae (Drake) Pitard; L. microstachys Hayata; Mephitidia balansae Drake.

Shrubs, 1-2 m tall; branches and branchlets slender, sparsely puberulent to glabrous, smooth. Petiole 4-9 mm, hirsute or strigillose; leaf blade papery or subleathery, ovate, ovate-oblong, or oblong-lanceolate, 5-10 × 2.5-3.5 cm, glabrous adaxially, sparsely to densely hirsute or strigillose to strigose on midrib and nerves abaxially, base obtuse or rounded to subacute, apex acute or acuminate; lateral veins 5 or 6 pairs; nervules parallel or subparallel; stipules triangular or lanceolate, 1-1.5 mm, densely strigillose. Inflorescences congested-cymose to capitate, pedunculate, densely strigillose; peduncles 1.5-5 mm, slender; bract reduced or linear and up to 2 mm; bracteoles minute. Flowers sessile. Calyx densely strigillose or villous to glabrescent; hypanthium portion campanulate, ca. 1 mm; limb 1-1.5 mm; teeth 5, subulate or triangular. Corolla 5-6.5 mm, glabrous to puberulent outside, villous inside; tube 3-6 mm; lobes 5, spatulate, 2-2.5 mm. Fruit globose to depressed globose, ca. 5 mm in diam., glabrous, smooth or with ca. 5 low ridges; pyrenes 5. Fl. Aug-Nov, fr. Sep-Oct.

Forests, shaded and wet places; 100-1800 m. Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Taiwan, Xizang, Yunnan, Zhejiang [NE India, Thailand, N Vietnam].

The glabrous stems with strigillose rings at the nodes and the narrowly triangular, rather well-developed calyx lobes are distinctive.