Phylica rubra Willd. ex Roem. & Schult.

A much branched shrub, 1-2.5 m high, stout in the lower parts, with wiry, reddish branches. Branchlets very numerous and very slender, sparsely covered with very short, soft, grey pubescence. Leaves closely set, 5-10 mm long: lamina erect-spreading, linear or lanceolate, with an incurved mucro, rounded or subcordate at base; upper surface smooth or somewhat wrinkled, at first minutely and sparsely pilose on the midrib, with revolute margins covering all or most of the lower surface: petiole about 1 mm long. Capitula very numerous, on the ends of short branches and panicled, about 3 mm wide, relatively few-flowered, widely rounded or almost flattened above, subtended by 2 or 3 leaves. Bracts 0.5-1 mm long, lanceolate, densely villous with white hairs on the outer surface. Bracteoles not seen. Flowers sessile, 1.25-1.5 mm long, covered with white tomentum on the outer surface: calyx-tube broadly cyathiform, filled with a fleshy disc: sepals deltoid-ovate, acute, 0.75 mm long, slightly convex, with the midrib prominent at the apex. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube and attached to the margin of the disc, 0.25 mm long: lamina rotundate, cucullate: claw about half as long, cuneate. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary obconic. Style scarcely 0.25 mm long. Stigma divided into 3 rounded lobes. Fruit about 5 mm long, rotundate, narrowed downwards, smooth, chestnut-brown, with a small, slightly concave calyx-base upon the summit.