Phylica excelsa J.C.Wendl.

A moderately branched shrub, up to about 1 m high, mostly with virgate branches. Branchlets rather slender, sparsely covered with short, grey pubescence with which are mingled long, silky hairs. Leaves often very closely set, 0.7-1.5 cm long: lamina ascending or erect-spreading, lanceolate, lanceolate-linear or acerose, acute, apiculate, rounded at base, with revolute margins covering the lower surface except for the midrib; upper surface with small tubercles, pilose on the margins, eventually glabrous; petiole 1.25-1.5 mm long. Capitula solitary, 1-1.5 cm long, conical or rotundate, densely many-flowered, subtended by leaves with fulvous pubescence. Bracts about 4 mm long, foliaceous, dorsally pubescent, with long, rather coarse, fulvous marginal hairs. Bracteoles 2, about 2.5 mm long, linear, dorsally villous. Flowers sessile, 4.5-5 mm long: calyx-tube 1.75-2 mm long, cyathiform, 5-sided, covered outside with short, retrorse, grey, silky hairs: sepals erect-spreading, 1.5-1.75 mm long, ovate, acute; outer surface puberulous and with long, ascending, coarse, fulvous hairs; inner surface with a distinct median ridge from base to apex. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, about 1.25 mm long: lamina cordate, acute, complicate-cucullate, with incurved margins, apiculate, rugulose on the dorsal surface: claw minute, subquadrate. Anthers about 0.5 mm long, cordate, 2-celled; the open cells broadly elliptic, somewhat obliquely truncate at apex. Ovary obconic, angular, covered with retrorse, grey, silky hairs. Style 1.5-2 mm long, slender. Stigma 0.5 mm long, subulate, with 3 connivent-erect lobes. Fruit 6-7 mm long, obovate-rotundate, wrinkled, puberulous, chestnut-brown, with a small depressed area on the summit.