Shrubs or small trees, evergreen, dioecious, to 2 m tall, unarmed. Young branches slender, puberulent; branchlets red-brown, with numerous tuberculate lenticels or laevigate. Stipules linear-lanceolate, persistent; petiole 4-8 mm, slightly puberulent; leaf blade abaxially pale green, adaxially dark green, elliptic or elliptic-lanceolate, 4-10 × 1.5-2.4 cm, papery to thickly papery, abaxially clustered hairy in vein axils, rarely slightly pubescent on veins, adaxially sparsely puberulent on veins or only on midvein, lateral veins 4 or 5 pairs, inconspicuously reticulate, prominent on both surfaces, base cuneate, margin slightly revolute when dry, serrulate, apex acuminate or shortly acuminate, rarely acute, often mucronulate. Flowers green, unisexual, 5-merous, broadly campanulate, usually 2-6-clustered in axils of small leaflike bracts; bracts elliptic-orbicular, to 2.5 cm. Sepals ovate-triangular, adaxially distinctly keeled and hooded apically. Pedicels 3-6 mm, sparsely puberulent. Male flowers with rudimentary pistil; style short, 3-fid. Female flowers solitary or 2-or 3-clustered, with very small rudimentary stamens; ovary globose, 3-loculed; style 3-cleft to half. Disk shallowly cup-shaped or disk-shaped, thin. Drupe purple-red at maturity, subglobose or obovoid-globose, ca. 5 mm in diam., with persistent calyx tube at base, with 3 stones; fruiting pedicel 6-10 mm, puberulent. Seeds abaxially with margined furrow for 4/5 of length. Fl. May-Jul, fr. Jun-Nov.
Home