Phylica mundii Pillans

A moderately branched shrub, about 40 cm high, with ascending, rather rigidly wiry branches which are commonly virgate. Branchlets clothed with adpressed, silky pubescence. Leaves closely set, often imbricate, 1.2-1.6 cm long: lamina ascending, mostly curved above the middle, acicular or narrowly linear, acute, rounded at base, semiterete, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface closely and minutely tubercled, at first covered with adpressed, silky, white hairs, tardily becoming glabrous: petiole 1-2 mm long. Inflorescence a dense, many-flowered raceme, 2-4 cm long, 1-1.5 cm wide. Flowers 7-8 mm long, on villous pedicels 1-2.5 mm long, in the axils of reduced leaves: calyx-tube 3-3.5 mm deep, narrowly campanulate, pentagonal, tomentose and villous on the outer surface: sepals 2.5-3 mm long, deltoid-ovate, acute, flattened, with a prominent midrib, tomentose and silky-villous on the outer surface. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, 1.5-2 mm long: lamina rotundate, deeply concave, cucullate: claw about half as long, cuneate or oblong-cuneate. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary obconic, densely covered with spreading, silky hairs. Style 4-5 mm long, subulate, reaching to about the middle of the petals. Stigma small, capitate. Fruit about 9 mm long, pedicellate, obconic, sparsely villous, blackish, with a very wide, convex calyx-area occupying the summit.