Chomelia spinosa Jacq.

Trees to 20 ft tall or shrubs, the branchlets terete, smooth, the twiglets often rough with crowded nodes and withered stipular remnants, branched, the branch-es often uniformly as short as 3 cm, usually strict, the spines axillary, divergent, lignose, to 2 cm long, to 0.25 cm wide at base. Leaves often crowded at the end of twigs, oblong, ovate oblong, rarely ovate rotund, 3.7-14.0 cm long, 2.5-5.6 cm wide, acute, rarely obtuse, acuminate or cuspidate, acute at base, obtuse, often sharply contracted, occasionally truncate, often slightly inequilateral, the costa prominulous above, prominent beneath, densely or moderately villose be-neath, the lateral veins 8-10, prominulous above and beneath, arcuate, the in-tervenal areas not lineolate; petioles to 2 cm long, to 0.5 mm wide, densely pubes-cent; stipules free, narrowly triangular, 4-6 mm long, tapering into an awn, scari-ous, pilose, often persistent. Inflorescences axillary, 1 per axil, 2-5 cm long, the pe-duncle capillaceous, ca. 0.4 cm long, strict, arcuate or occasionally deflexed, the cymules terminal, few flowered, the flowers erect, sessile, disposed like a can-delabra. Flowers with the hypanthium rotund, 1.0-1.5 mm long, the calycine tube ca. 2 times the length of the hypanthium, the teeth 4, unequal, subulate, to 0.8 mm long, sericeous outside; corolla white, the tube cylindrical, to 18 mm long at maturity, to 0.65 mm wide at the middle, stiffly petaloid, the lobes 4, ovate lanceolate, to 6 mm long, conspicuously hooded at the narrow apex, sericeous outside, glabrous within, the margin scarious; stamens 4, the anthers linear ob-long, ca. 3.5 mm long, obtuse, sagittate at the base, barely exserted, the filaments slender, very short, attached just below the mouth; ovarian disc about 0.6 mm long, the stigmas 2, linear oblong, ca. 1 mm long, the style ca. 17 mm long, slightly exserted, glabrous. Fruits sessile, oblong or ovate oblong, 0.5-0.9 cm long, obtuse or truncate at the apex, the persistent calyx ca. 1 mm long, drying black, pubescent, delicately ribbed.

It is a tropical plant. It grows as an understorey plant is seasonally dry forests. It grows from sea level to 400 m above sea level.