Ilex macropoda Miq.

Trees deciduous, 10-13(-17) m tall; bark gray-brown, smooth. Branchlets gray or brown, longitudinally angular, with conspicuous lenticels, glabrous; spur branchlets 4-30 mm, rugose with persistent bud scales and leaf scars. Stipules deltoid, minute; petiole 1-2 cm, adaxially narrowly and deeply sulcate, hirsute; leaf blade adaxially green, ovate or broadly elliptic, 4-8 × 2.5-4.5 cm, papery or membranous, abaxially glabrous or sparsely puberulent, adaxially glabrous except on veins, midvein flat, puberulent adaxially, lateral veins 6-8 pairs, raised abaxially, flat adaxially, anastomosing near margin, reticulate veins evident abaxially, base cuneate or obtuse, margin sharply serrate, apex acuminate or acute. Male inflorescences: 1-flowered cymes, fasciculate; fascicles 2-5-flowered; pedicels 4-7 mm, pubescent; calyx patelliform, ca. 2.5 mm in diam., shallowly 5-lobed, lobes ca. 1 × 1 mm, margin erose, ciliate; corolla reflexed, rotate, ca. 5 mm in diam., petals oblong, ca. 2 × 1.5 mm, minutely ciliate; stamens 5, shorter than petals, anthers oblong; rudimentary ovary pulvinate, depressed at center. Female inflorescences: 1-flowered cymes, solitary, or fasciculate, axillary to scales or rarely to leaves of spur branchlets, or to leaves; pedicels 6-7 mm, glabrous; flowers 5-or 6-merous; calyx and corolla as in male flowers; staminodes ca. 3/4 as long as petals, sterile anthers cordate; ovary ovoid, ca. 1.7 mm, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., glabrous, stigma thickly discoid. Fruit red, globose, ca. 5 mm in diam.; fruiting pedicel 6-7 mm; persistent calyx explanate, persistent stigma discoid, convex, shallowly 5-or 6-lobed; pyrenes 5, oblong, 4-5.5 mm, ca. 2 mm in diam., abaxially longitudinally reticulately striate and sulcate, endocarp bony. Fl. May-Jun, fr. Oct-Nov.

In forests in low mountains all over Japan. Mixed forests, forest margins, thickets, roadsides, mountains; at elevations from 800-1,900 metres in China.

Can be grown by cuttings or seedlings.