秦氏蛇根草 qin shi she gen cao

Herbs, weak; stems elongated, drying brownish red, glabrous or puberulent. Leaves in markedly unequal pairs; petiole 0.5-3 cm, puberulent; blade drying thinly papery, straw-yellow except usually purple on midrib, lanceolate-oblong to elliptic, larger ones 3.5-9.5 × 1.3-2.7 cm, smaller ones 1.5-6.5 × 0.7-1.8 cm, subglabrous on both surfaces or sparsely strigose or pilose adaxially and puberulent along principal veins abaxially, base cuneate, margins subentire, apex caudate-acuminate; secondary veins 8 or 9 pairs; stipules caducous, not seen. Inflorescence congested-cymose, few flowered, puberulent to pilosulous; peduncle 1-1.5 cm; axes reduced or 2 or 3, helicoid, ca. 1 cm; bracteoles linear, 3.5-4 mm, obtuse. Flowers distylous, subsessile. Calyx puberulent or pilosulous to glabrescent; hypanthium turbinate, ca. 1.2 mm, 5-ribbed; lobes subovate or sublanceolate, ca. 0.5 mm. Corolla white, tubular-funnelform, subglabrous outside, inside with white villous ring near middle and sometimes scaly villosulous in upper part and onto lobes; tube ca. 9 mm; lobes elliptic-oblong, ca. 3 mm, dorsally with wing ca. 0.5 mm wide, apex subrostrate. Capsules not seen. Fl. Apr.

● Wet places in forests. Yunnan (Yangbi).

Although the original description (H. S. Lo, Bull. Bot. Res., Harbin 10(2): 65. 1990, not validly published) reported that the long-styled flowers were not found, the figure in FRPS (72(1): 161, t. 41, f. 9-13. 1999) illustrated these. That figure shows the corollas as similar in size between the two forms but with the internal pubescence restricted to the upper middle part of the tube in the short-styled form and from the middle of the tube through the top of the lobes in the long-styled form; also, the anthers and stigmas are reciprocally positioned near or just below the middle of the corolla tube and in the throat, respectively.