兰屿九节木 lan yu jiu jie mu

Psychotria kotoensis Hayata.

Shrubs or small trees, height not noted; stems glabrous. Petiole 1.2-6 cm, glabrous; leaf blade drying papery, pale reddish brown, dark brown, or green sometimes tinged with red-purple, elliptic, elliptic-oblong, or elliptic-ovate, 10-16 × 3.5-7 cm, glabrous on both surfaces, base cuneate to acute, margins flat, apex acute or acuminate; secondary veins 6-12 pairs, free or forming a weak submarginal vein, without domatia; stipules caducous, ovate, interpetiolar or shortly fused around stem, 7-10 mm, glabrous, ciliate, 2-lobed for ca. 1/5 of length, lobes ligulate to triangular. Inflorescences terminal, subcapitate to congested-cymose, several flowered, subsessile to sessile, glabrous to densely hirtellous; bracts triangular to ligulate, 1-3 mm; pedicels to 2 mm. Flowers subsessile to pedicellate. Calyx glabrous; hypanthium portion turbinate, ca. 1 mm; limb ca. 1 mm, lobed for 1/3-1/2; lobes deltoid to narrowly triangular. Corolla in bud white, funnelform, glabrous outside; tube ca. 1.5 mm, villous inside; lobes triangular-oblong, ca. 1.5 mm. Drupes becoming red then black, ellipsoid to obovoid, 8-10 × 6-8 mm, with pedicels to 7 mm; pyrenes smooth or very shallowly 3- or 4-ribbed. Fl. Apr, fr. Aug.

Broad-leaved forests; below 100-400 m. Taiwan (Lan Yu) [Philippines].

The stipules of these plants have been described by previous authors as acute to obtuse, but these are bilobed on all the specimens studied, although this is difficult to see in many cases because the lobes are usually imbricate in bud.

This name is here provisionally applied to these plants. Sohmer and Davis (Sida, Bot. Misc. 27: 60-63. 2007) excluded the Taiwanese plants from their circumscription of Psychotria cephalophora, without providing another name for them (presumably P. kotoensis would be available) or delimiting the differences between the two. They noted that the endosperm of P. cephalophora is ruminate although the pyrenes are smooth on the outer surface; the Taiwanese specimens studied do appear to have ruminate endosperm.