Ilex liana S. Y. Hu

Trees evergreen, ca. 13 m tall. Branchlets terete, thick, glabrous, rugose, tuberculate, lenticels elliptic, leaf scars circular, both raised; current year’s branchlets longitudinally ridged and sulcate; terminal and axillary buds ovoid, large, bud scales densely puberulent. Petiole subterete, 1.5-2 cm, longitudinally narrowly sulcate, abaxially rugose, glabrous; leaf blade olivaceous when dry, not shiny, ovate-oblong or ovate, 7.5-9 × 4-5.5 cm, leathery, both surfaces glabrous, midvein deeply impressed adaxially, lateral veins 17 or 18 pairs, raised on both surfaces, anastomosing near margin, reticulate veins dense and evident, base rounded, margin crenulate-serrate, apex acute. Flowers not known. Infructescences: cymes of order 1 or 2, 1-3-fruited, pseudopaniculate, axillary; rachis ca. 1 cm, rugose; bracts caducous, ovate, puberulent, ciliate; fruiting pedicels 5-6 mm, glabrous or puberulent; bracteoles 2, basal. Fruit red, globose, ca. 4 mm; persistent calyx explanate, patelliform, 3-4 mm in diam., 4-lobed, lobes deltoid, ciliate; persistent stigma discoid, 4-lobed; pyrenes 4, ellipsoidal, ca. 2.5 mm, ca. 1.5 mm in diam., puberulent, abaxially palmately striate and longitudinally sulcate, laterally rugose and obscurely striate and sulcate, endocarp woody. Fl. unknown, fr. Oct-Nov.

S Yunnan (Jingdong).

● Mixed forests, hill slopes; 2800-2900 m.