小叶茜草 xiao ye qian cao

Subshrubs, with oblique rootstock; stems to 0.5 m, clumped, quadrangular, glabrous, smooth. Leaves in whorls of 4-6(or 7), subsessile or sessile; blade drying stiffly papery, elliptic-oblong, ligulate, oblanceolate, or lanceolate, 0.5-1.7 × 0.2-0.8 cm, glabrous, smooth, base obtuse to cuneate, margins thickened and aculeolate, apex acute to obtuse with stiff short cusp; principal vein 1. Inflorescences thyrsoid, with terminal and axillary, several- to many-flowered cymes; axes glabrous and smooth; bracts leaflike, 2-5 mm; pedicels ca. 1 mm. Ovary ca. 0.8 mm, smooth. Corolla yellow, funnel-shaped, (2.5-)3-3.5(-4) mm; tube ca. 1.5 mm; lobes often only 4, oblong-lanceolate, ca. 2 mm, obtuse with short incurved cusp. Mericarp berry black-purple when dry, 6-7 mm in diam. Fl. Jun, fr. Aug.

Sandy lands. Xinjiang [Kazakhstan, Mongolia].

Rubia rezniczenkoana is a rather isolated C Asiatic psammophyte, for which Pojarkova (Fl. URSS 23: 397. 1958) has created the monotypic R. sect. Chonanthe, which we include provisionally into R. sect. Rubia (see introduction to Rubia).