广西野独活 guang xi ye du huo

Shrubs to 1.5 m tall. Branchlets terete, ferruginous pilose to glabrescent. Petiole to 2 mm; leaf blade elliptic to narrowly ovate-lanceolate, 3-8 × 1-3 cm, sparsely pilose to glabrescent, secondary veins 13-20 on each side of midvein, base obliquely rounded, apex shortly acuminate. Inflorescences superaxillary, 1- or 2-flowered; bracts ovate, 0.5-1 mm, sericeous. Pedicel filiform, 0.5-0.7 cm, glabrous. Sepals broadly ovate, ca. 1 mm, outside minutely strigose, inside glabrous. Outer petals as long as sepals; inner petals ovate, ca. 3.5 × 2.5 mm, outside minutely strigose, inside glabrous. Stamens ca. 20; filaments as long as anther locules; connectives broader than anther locules, subangular. Carpels ca. 10, glabrous. Fruit not seen. Fl. Jul, fr. Aug-Oct.

● Forested slopes; below 900 m. Guangxi.

The Annonaceae Checklist (Rainer & Chatrou, eds., AnnonBase in Species 2010 & ITIS Catalogue of Life; http://herbarium.botanik. univie.ac.at/annonaceae/listTax.php; accessed on 1 Oct 2010) treats this species as a synonym of Orophea polycarpa. The short pedicels are certainly anomalous among other Chinese species of Miliusa and more typical of Orophea, but there are serious discrepancies in the descriptions of these two taxa within China, most notably in petal sizes and stamen numbers, such that we do not wish to follow the checklist here.