剑叶耳草 jian ye er cao

Hedyotis hui Diels.

Shrubs or perhaps subshrubs, erect, perennial, to 90 cm tall; stems terete, shallowly striate, glabrous. Leaves petiolate; petiole 10-15 mm; blade drying leathery, grayish white abaxially, lanceolate, 6-13 × 1.5-3 cm, base cuneate or decurrent, apex caudate-acuminate; secondary veins ca. 4 pairs but indistinct; stipules broadly ovate, 2-3 mm, entire or glandular-serrulate, acute. Inflorescences compound-cymose to paniculate, several to many flowered; axes generally dichotomous; bracts lanceolate or linear-lanceolate. Flowers shortly pedicellate. Calyx with hypanthium portion turbinate, ca. 3 mm; limb deeply lobed; lobes ovate-triangular. Corolla white or pink, tubular, outside glabrous; tube 4-8 mm, barbate in throat; lobes lanceolate. Stigmas exserted or included. Fruit capsular, ellipsoid-oblong or ellipsoid, ca. 2.5 × 2 mm, smooth, glabrous, dehiscent; seeds several, black, subtriangular. Fl. May-Jun.

● Dry soil in jungles, thickets, on rock cliffs, on clay soil in grasslands. Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang.

W. C. Ko (in FRPS 71(1): 48. 1999) described the petioles of this species as 10-15 mm and the hypanthium as ca. 3 mm, but the accompanying figure (p. 50, t. 7, f. 7-10) does not show these features.