Phylica atrata Licht. ex Roem. & Schult.

A moderately branched shrub, usually 30-60 cm high. Branchlets slender, clothed with short, grey pubescence with which are intermingled longer hairs. Leaves rather crowded, 6-10 mm long: lamina erect-spreading, slightly incurved, lanceolate, acute, apiculate, cordate at base, with revolute margins almost entirely covering the lower surface; upper surface smooth, glabrous, obscurely tubercled and at first pilose on the margins which soon become glabrous: petiole about 1 mm long. Capitula solitary, about 1 cm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded at base by leaves and foliaceous bracts. Bracts of the outer flowers 4-6 mm long, consisting of considerably widened and flattened petioles with foliaceous apex. Bracts of the inner flowers about 3 mm long, acicular, covered on the outer surface with long, ascending, grey hairs. Bracteoles 2, similar but shorter. Flowers shortly stipitate, 3-3.5 mm long: calyx-tube 0.75-1.25 mm deep, cyathiform, glabrous: sepals 1-1.25 mm long, linear-lanceolate, acute, covered on the outer surface with long, white hairs, glabrous on the inner surface, distinctly convex from the apex to shortly below the middle. Petals inserted half way up the tube or on the lower half. 0.5-0.75 mm long: lamina calyptriform, with the subacute apex slightly recurved and reaching to the mouth of the calyx-tube: claw scarcely half as long, linear. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary narrowly turbinate, glabrous. Stigma subsessile, depressed-orbicular. Fruit obovate-rotundate. 3-4 mm long, blackish, with 3 longitudinal furrows and a small depressed area.