糠藤 kang teng

Lianas; branches at base with persistent leafless stipules, glabrous, terete, drying brown. Leaves opposite; petiole 6-10 mm, glabrous to puberulent; blade drying thinly to thickly papery, adaxially shiny and reddish dark brown, abaxially matte to somewhat shiny and reddish brown, elliptic, elliptic-lanceolate, or oblong, 6-14 × 2-6 cm, glabrous, base rounded, cuneate, or acute, apex acute to acuminate; secondary veins 6-9 pairs, with pilosulous domatia; stipules fused into a tube, 5-15 mm, puberulent to glabrous, truncate, on each side with 2 bristles 0.2-1 mm. Inflorescence terminal; peduncles 5-10, fasciculate to umbellate, 8-18 mm, puberulent, as a group subtended by several triangular to bifid bracts 1-2 mm; heads 1 per peduncle, subglobose to hemispherical, 4-6 mm in diam., 4-12-flowered. Flowers fused only shortly at base, biology not noted. Calyx puberulent to glabrescent; limb ca. 1 mm, truncate, sinuate, or shallowly lobed; lobes rounded, ciliolate. Corolla subcampanulate, puberulent outside; tube ca. 2 mm, inside densely villous in upper part and throat; lobes 4 or 5, narrowly oblong to lanceolate, ca. 2 mm, apically thickened and rostrate. Drupecetum subglobose to oblate, 8-14 mm in diam. Drupes fully fused, subglobose, 4-5 mm. Fl. Apr-May, fr. Jul-Oct.

● Forests in valleys and at streamsides, thickets at roadsides or on hill slopes; 300-700 m. Guangdong (Yangjiang), Hainan.

The protologue commented that "the presence of bristles on the glabrous capitulum is also very characteristic," but these bristles are apparently small bracts, which are now also known from several other Chinese species of Morinda.