囊果龙船花 nang guo long chuan hua

Shrubs or small trees, 2-2.5 m tall; branches glabrous. Leaves opposite, subsessile; blade drying thinly leathery, lanceolate, elliptic, or oblanceolate, 10-12 × 3-4 cm, glabrous on both surfaces, base obtuse, apex long acuminate; stipules glabrous, long acuminate with apex subulate or linear, longer than sheath. Inflorescences subsessile, corymbiform and trichotomous, several flowered; axes slender; bracts subulate or linear. Calyx with hypanthium ca. 1 mm; lobes linear, 0.8-1.3 mm. Corolla tube 13-45 mm, glabrous in throat; lobes narrowly elliptic-oblong, acute. Drupe saccate, 8-8.4 mm in diam.

Sparse forests; 1200-1500 m. Xizang (Mêdog) [India, S Thailand].

W. C. Ko (in FRPS 71(2): 33. 1999) described this species as highly variable, in particular in leaf shape, in the corolla tubes ranging 13-45 mm, and in the stigma varying from bilobed to entire; this range of variation is indeed rather unusual.