Phylica pinea Thunb.

A much branched shrub, about 90 cm high, rather stout in the lower parts, with the upper branches and branchlets tomentose and villous. Leaves closely set, mostly about 1.2 cm long: lamina ascending or erect-spreading, straight or slightly incurved above the middle, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, cordate at base, acute at apex, with revolute margins partly covering the lower surface; upper surface minutely and closely tuberculate-scabrid, villous, becoming glabrous: petiole about 1 mm long. Racemes 0.5-2 cm long, dense, usually hemisphaeric or rotundate, sometimes capituliform, terminal or rarely surpassed by vegetative growth. Pedicels 2-7 mm long, in the axils of reduced leaves, covered with white tomentum, rarely with 1 or 2 bracteoles about the middle. Flowers 2.5-4 mm long, distinctly constricted between the calyx and ovary, covered with white tomentum on the outer surface: calyx-tube about 0.5 mm deep, broadly cyathiform, almost filled with a fleshy disc: sepals 1-1.5 mm long, ovate or deltoid-ovate, acute, convex at the apex or with a raised median nerve. Petals 0.75-1 mm long, inserted at the mouth of the tube and attached to the margin of the disc: lamina orbicular or reniform, cucullate: claw as long or longer, oblong or cuneate-oblong. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary turbinate. Style very short, conical. Stigma consisting of 3 minute rounded lobes. Fruit 6-7 mm long, rotundate, with 3 longitudinal sulcae, puberulous, chestnut-brown, with a narrow calyx-base upon the summit.