Phylica cryptandroides Sond.

A shrub, often up to 3 m in height, with many virgate branches. Branchlets wiry, thinly covered with adpressed, grey pubescence. Leaves closely set, 1-1.5 cm long: lamina linear-subulate, mucronate, rounded at base, mostly curved, with closely re volute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface rounded, minutely tuberculate-scabrid, at first silky pubescent, becoming glabrous: petiole 1.5-2 cm long. Inflorescences are few-flowered capituliform racemes, always assembled in panicles sometimes so small and congested as to appear to be capitula. Panicles 0.8-3 cm wide. Racemes with tomentose stalks. Bracts caducous, lanceolate, tomentose, shorter than the flowers. Bracteoles absent. Pedicels 0.75-2 mm long, tomentose. Flowers 1.5-2 mm long, covered outside with white tomentum, glabrous within: calyx-tube 0.5 mm deep, broadly cyathiform, lined up to the mouth with a fleshy disc: sepals 1 mm long, deltoid-ovate, acute, flattened, gibbous at the apex, with the midrib slightly prominent on the upper half. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, 0.5 mm long: limb orbicular, cucullate: claw less than half as long, oblong. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary obconic. Style short, stout, with 3 small stigmatic lobes. Fruit about 6 mm long, rotundate, thinly tomentose, with a broad convex area occupying the summit.