阳春耳草 yang chun er cao

Herbs or subshrubs, erect, to 50 cm tall; stems 4-angled to subterete, densely scabrous to smooth. Leaves petiolate, often crowded at tops of stems; petiole 15-20 mm, glabrous; blade drying thickly papery, narrowly elliptic, oblanceolate, or elliptic-oblong, (3-)8-12 × (1-)3-4.5 cm, glabrous, base acute and decurrent, apex obtuse to broadly obtuse; secondary veins 5-7 pairs; stipules broadly triangular, ca. 16 mm, lacerate or with several narrow lobes. Inflorescences and flowers not seen. Infructescences terminal, in a panicle of congested-cymose or capitate heads; heads 2-5, hemispherical to subglobose, 2-2.3 cm in diam., several flowered, pedunculate, enclosed by a pair of ovate reduced leaves or leaflike bracts ca. 15 mm; peduncles 5-7 cm; floral bracts linear, 5-7 mm; pedicels 2-3 mm. Fruit capsular, ellipsoid or subglobose, ca. 3 × 2-2.5 mm, membranous, septicidally dehiscent then loculicidal, with calyx lobes lanceolate to elliptic, 3-3.5 mm, longitudinally veined, long acuminate; seeds several, black, angled. Fl. Apr-Jun.

● Hills, sparse forests in valleys; ca. 400 m. Guangdong (Yangchun).