Cliffortia anthospermoides Fellingham

Medium, erect shrub, up to 1 m high, monoecious but with alternating male and female phases; young branches reddish with indumentum of long white hair, turning greyish brown, becoming glabrous, hair bases remaining as pustules, bark splitting and peeling, ageing to a smooth glabrous reddish brown surface with persistent patent, woody sheaths of fallen leaves with central nerves prominent, giving appearance of thorny petioles; internodes ± 10 mm long, shorter than leaves, giving plant a leafy appearance. Leaves trifoliate; leaflets 5.5-7.0 x 0.9-1.0 mm, straight to falcate to twisted giving an untidy appearance; margins scabrid to minutely denticulate; lamina bright green, glabrous adaxially, with occasional long hairs on margin and abaxially; sheath 1-2 mm long below central leaflet, diminishing distally, glabrous except for a few long cilia on margins, 3-nerved, medially herbaceous, laterally pinky white membranous; stipules represented by the membranous edges of sheaths forming rectangular ‘wings’. Flowers solitary, ebracteate, in axils of vegetative leaves separated by long internodes. Male flowers: bracteoles ovate-lanceolate, 2.2 x 1.5 mm, glabrous, scarious, whitish; pedicel and receptacle 1 mm long, glabrous; sepals 3(or 4), linear-lanceolate, 3.7-4.3 x 2.6-3.0 mm, green with occasional maroon longitudinal lines, prominently mucronate even in bud, adaxially with obvious locking mechanism consisting of subapical tuft of crisped papillae; stamens (9)10-12; filaments 5 mm long, maroon, glabrous; anthers 0.7-0.8 mm long, maroon-red with white connective. Female flowers: bracteoles ovate-lanceolate, 3.4-3.6 x 2.0-2.3 mm, membranous, translucent, sheathing fruit, inner bracteole with apical one fifth part reflexed, outer with a tuft of retrorse hair at base; pedicel absent up to 0.6 mm long in fruit, glabrous; sepals 3, broadly elliptic, 1.9-2.0 x 1.5-1.6 mm, spreading, mucronate, glabrous but for papillate locking mechanism ventrally near apex, fugacious; immature receptacle ellipsoid, 1.5 mm x 0.8 mm, pale green with occasional longitudinal reddish lines; style solitary, 0.2-0.3 mm, pale green, glabrous; stigma 1.8-2.2 mm long, deep maroon-red, fimbriate. Achene ellipsoid, 1.9-2.1 x 1.5-1.6 mm, apex with small indentation containing staminodes and ridged by remains of fallen sepals, apical two thirds with ± 12 low longitudinal ridges, green, tinged with maroon where exposed to sun, lower third smooth, base concave with central pedicel scar surrounded by a ring of stiff hairs.