Ilex tsangii S. Y. Hu

Trees evergreen, ca. 8 m tall, glabrous throughout. Young branchlets slender, subterete, longitudinally ridged; third year’s branchlets black, with leaf scars raised, lenticels absent; terminal buds narrowly conical, apically acute. Leaves on first to third year’s branchlets; petiole 1-1.6 cm, slender, narrowly sulcate; leaf blade green, ovate-elliptic, elliptic, or narrowly elliptic, 2.5-8 × 1-3 cm, subleathery, midvein slightly impressed adaxially, lateral veins 6-8 pairs, evident or obscure abaxially, obscure adaxially, base acute or cuneate, margin inconspicuously crenulate or subentire, apex acuminate, acumen 1-1.5 cm. Flowers not known. Infructescences: 1-fruited cymes, fasciculate, fascicles 2-4-fruited, axillary on second year’s branchlets; fruiting pedicels 1.5-12 mm; bracteoles 2, basal, ciliate. Fruit globose, 3-6 mm in diam., rugose, apex depressed; persistent calyx minute, ca. 1.5 mm in diam.; persistent stigma thinly discoid; pyrenes 4, obovoid, 3-4 mm, 1.5-3 mm in diam., one end slightly pointed, throughout reticulately striate and irregularly rugose and sulcate, or abaxially deeply 1-sulcate, nearly smooth and laterally slightly striate-rugose, endocarp thickly leathery. Fl. unknown, fr. Jun-Jul.

E Guangdong, Guangxi.

● Thickets, hills, forests at summits of rocky hills; 500-1500 m.