Smokebush

Medicinal.

Shrubs or climbers, 2--10 m; branchlets, leaf blades abaxially, petioles, and inflorescences densely grayish white stellate tomentose, drying rusty. Branchlets terete. Petiole 0.5--2 cm; leaf blade narrowly ovate to elliptic, 2--14 X 1.5--7 cm, adaxially glabrous or subglabrous, base rounded, acute, cuneate, or rarely subcordate, margin entire, apex acuminate, lateral veins 6--12 pairs. Inflorescences terminal, paniculate or thyrsoid, 5--25 X 2--15 cm. Calyx campanulate to urceolate, 2--3.5 cm; lobes broadly triangular, 0.4--1 X 0.5--1 mm. Corolla dark yellow, orange, or salmon; tube 7--10 mm, outside stellate tomentose, inside with a pilose belt; lobes ovate to suborbicular, 2--4 X 2--3 mm. Stamens inserted just below corolla mouth; anthers oblong, 1--1.4 mm. Ovary subglobose, 1--1.5 mm, apex stellate tomentose, 4-locular. Style base stellate tomentose; stigma clavate, 1.2--1.7 mm. Berries white at first, purple-blue when ripe, globose, 2.5--5 mm in diam., glandular pubescent or glabrous, often stellate tomentose at apex. Seeds ellipsoid to obliquely ovoid, ca. 1 X 0.5 mm, unwinged. Fl. Apr-Jun, fr. Aug-Nov. 2n = 38.

Cultivated in Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi [introduced from Madagascar, cultivated throughout tropical and subtropical Asia]

100--300 m.

Adenoplea madagascariensis (Lamarck) Eastwood; Nicodemia madagascariensis (Lamarck) R. Parker.