Symplocos lucida Siebold & Zucc.

Shrub or tree to 20 m, 25 cm Ø. Twigs glabrous, yellowish green, angular when dry. Leaves coriaceous, glabrous (sometimes quite thin), acute or obtuse with cuneate base and entire or glandular dentate re volute margin, ± elliptic, 5-12 by 2-4½ cm; midrib more or less prominent on the upper surface, often sulcate towards the base; nerves 5-15 pairs, prominent on both upper and under-surface; petiole 5-15 mm. Flowers in a basally branched short dense raceme or condensed spike of 1½-4 cm; axis puberulous or pubescent. Bracts and bracteoles persistent under the fruit, glabrous, or sometimes pubescent or puberulous on midrib and base, 1-3 mm. Pedicels 0-5 mm. Calyx mostly glabrous, nearly divided into 5 lobes, 1-3 mm. Corolla 3-5 mm. Stamens 10-70. Disk densely hairy. Ovary glabrous, ½-2 mm high; style glabrous, or hairy, mostly towards the base. Fruit ellipsoid (to rarely nearly orbicular), 1-3-celled, 5-18 by 4—15 mm, the wider ones with 2 seeds. Seeds usually U-shaped with U-shaped embryo, in the 3-celled fruits the seeds abortive or (at most) V-shaped; the legs of the U are either separated by a septum or not.

High and low mountain forest, elfin forest, and mossy forest at higher altitude, also in tjemara forest, 1500-3000 m. Fl. (July) Oct.-Nov.; fr. July (April-Oct.). In habit very much resembling the Theaceous Pyrenaria ser rata Bl. which grows in similar forest.