Lindera pulcherrima (Nees) Benth.

Habit

Shrub

Family Description

Evergreen or decidious trees or shrubs, often aromatic; twigs with or without conspicous terminal vegetative buds and rings of bud scale scars. Leaves alternate, sometimes opposite or clustered at branch ends, simple, sometimes shallowly lobed near apex, pinnately veined or strongly 3-veined, exstipulate. Flowers in panicles, eacemes or umbels, umbels often enclosed by subpersistent scales and arranged in fascicles or racemes; unisexual or bisexual, actinomorphic. Perianth segments usually 6, free, in two whorls of 3. Fertile stamens usually 9, rarely 6 or 12, in whorls of 3, innermost filaments usually bearing glands, often with an inner whorl of 3 staminodes; female flowers with 9 or 12 staminodes; anthers dehiscing by 2 or 4 valves. Ovary usually superior, ovile 1, apical, style short, rarely filiform. Fruit a drupe usually borne on enlarged cup-shaped remains of perianth, rarely perianth completely absent or totally enclosing drupe.

Genus Description

Deciduous or evergreen trees or srubs; shoots with or without conspicuous terminal vegetative buds. Leaves alternate, not clustered, pinnately veined or 3-veined from base. Dioecious; flowers unisexual, in sessile or pedunclate, often clustered or racemose umbels, each umbel enclosed by large persistent decussate scales forming a subglobose bud when young. Perianth segments usually 6. Fertile stamens 9 with 2-celled anthers, all introse. Fruit ovoid ot globose, borne on a little-enlarged, entire or toothed perianth cup.

Species description

Evergreen shrub or samll tree to 5m. Leaves elliptic to lanceolate, 6-12 x 2.5-6cm, finely acuminate to long-caudate, base rounded or cuneate, whitish sericeous beneath when young becoming subglabrous and glaucous beneath, strongly 3-veined from base to apex, minor veins transerverse, not very prominent; petioles 8-12mm. Umbels solitary, subsessile, 3-8-flowered; pedicels 4-5mm. Perianth segments c 3mm, deciduous. Fruit ellipsoid, c 10 x 7mm, borne above entire perianth rim c 2mm across.

Deothang, Thimphu, Punakha, Trongsa, Mongar, Upper Mo chu. 2100-2600m