Camellia ilicifolia Y. K. Li & Hung T. Chang

Shrubs or trees, 2-10 m tall. Young branches brown to grayish brown; current year branchlets reddish brown, 4-ribbed, glabrous. Petiole 5-10 mm, glabrous; leaf blade oblong, oblong-elliptic, oblong-ovate, or narrowly lanceolate, 6-11 × 1.5-3.8 cm, leathery, abaxially pale green, with sparse appressed trichomes but especially dense along midvein, and becoming pale brown to reddish brown when dry, adaxially dark green, shiny, glabrous, and becoming pale brown when dry, secondary veins 6-8 on each side of midvein and visible or slightly raised on both surfaces, reticulate veins adaxially slightly impressed, base broadly cuneate to rounded, margin apiculate-serrulate or serrulate only at apex, apex acuminate. Flowers axillary or subterminal, solitary, subsessile. Bracteoles 4, caducous, semiorbicular to suborbicular, 1.5-3.5 mm, crustaceous, outside glabrous or yellowish sericeous near apex, margin scarious and ciliolate. Sepals 5 or 6, ± persistent, orbicular, 0.8-1.2 cm, outside gray sericeous, inside glabrous. Petals 5 or 6, white or rarely red, obovate to long obovate, 1.7-2.2 cm, basally connate for 4-5 mm, apex emarginate. Stamens 1-1.5 cm, glabrous; outer filament whorl basally connate for ca. 5 mm. Ovary minutely rugulose, glabrous, 3(or 4)-loculed; styles 3(or 4), distinct, 1-1.5 cm, glabrous. Capsule subglobose, 1.8-2 cm in diam., 3-loculed with usually 1 seed per locule; pericarp tuberculate, splitting into 3 valves. Seeds brown, globose to semiglobose, ca. 1.4 cm in diam., pale yellowish villous. Fl. Dec-Jan, fr. Sep.

N and S Guizhou.

● Forests, thickets; 700-1300 m.