Phylica buxifolia L.

A much branched stout shrub up to 3 m high. Branchlets clothed with buff-coloured, velvety pubescence. Leaves well spaced, mostly 1.5-2.5 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, ovate or elliptic, subacute, rounded or subcordate at base, with slightly revolute margins; upper surface finely tuberculate-scabrid, with impressed nerves, at first pubescent, soon becoming glabrous; lower surface exposed, with evident secondary nerves, covered with felt-like tomentum: petiole about 2 mm long. Capitula 4-7 mm wide, flattened above, comparatively few-flowered, terminating slender, leafless branchlets 0.5-2 cm long or sessile on the main axis, usually assembled in short panicles. Bracts of the outer flowers foliaceous, those of the inner shorter, pubescent. Bracteoles absent. Flowers 2-3 mm long, shortly stipitate, covered outside with short, cream-coloured tomentum, glabrous within: calyx-tube broadly cyathiform, almost filled with a fleshy disc, having a free outer margin: sepals 1.25-1.5 mm long, ovate, acute, flattened, slightly gibbous at the apex. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, 0.75-1 mm long: lamina cucullate, rotundate: claw about as long or shorter, cuneate. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary broadly obconic. Style scarcely 0.5 mm long, stout, trigonous. Stigma consisting of 3 short lobes. Fruit 8-10 mm long, rotundate, with a wide, flattened area on the summit, covered with short tomentum.