Trema nitida C. J. Chen

The wood is fine and strong, tannin is extracted from the bark, the fibers are used for manufacturing paper, ropes, and staple rayon, and the leaves are used as emery cloth.

Trees, 5-10 m tall, dioecious or monoecious. Branchlets brownish purple to grayish brown, with appressed grayish white pubescence. Stipules linear, 8-10 mm, pubescent, caducous. Petiole 0.8-2 cm, with adnate pubescence; leaf blade lanceolate to narrowly lanceolate, 7-15 × 1.5-4.5 cm, thinly papery, abaxially completely covered with silver gray to grayish yellow appressed shiny pubescence, adaxially dark green and smooth or ± scabrous, base ± rounded to rarely ± cordate and symmetric or ± oblique, margin denticulate, apex acuminate to acute; basally 3-veined; secondary veins 3-5 on each side of midvein. Cymes shorter than petiole; peduncles with adnate pubescence. Male flowers: ca. 1 mm in diam. Ovary rudimentary, apically sparsely pubescent. Female flowers: shortly pedicellate. Tepals 5, triangular-ovate. Drupes blackish purple when mature, ± globose to broadly ellipsoid, ± compressed, 2-3 mm in diam., glabrous; perianth persistent. Fl. Apr-Jul, fr. Aug-Nov.

Guangxi, W Guizhou, Sichuan, S Yunnan.

* Moist forests on limestone slopes;; 600–1800 m.