Species: Michelia macclurei
English Name: McClure’s Michelia
Chinese Name: 醉香含笑丶火力楠
Family: Magnoliaceae
Description:
Trees, to 30 m tall, to 1 m d.b.h. Bark grayish white, smooth and not fissured. Young twigs, buds, petioles, stipules, and brachyblasts densely firmly and glossy reddish brown shortly tomentose to spreading villous. Petiole 1.5-4 cm, adaxially narrowly furrowed, without a stipular scar; leaf blade obovate, elliptic-obovate, rhomboid, or oblong-elliptic, 7-18 × 5-7 cm, leathery, abaxially with grayish trichomes mixed with brown appressed short tomentum, adaxially at first pubescent but later glabrescent, secondary veins 10-15 on each side of midvein, slender, and adaxially inconspicuous, reticulate veins slender, forming a honeycomb pattern, base cuneate to broadly cuneate, apex shortly acute to acuminate. Brachyblasts 1-1.8 cm, 3-4 mm in diam., with 2-3 bract scars. Flower buds sometimes enclosing 2 or 3 small flower buds on different nodes and forming a 2- or 3-flowered thyrse. Tepals usually 9-12, white, rarely red, spoon-shaped to oblanceolate, 3-5 cm; inner tepals narrower and smaller. Stamens 1-2 cm; filaments red, ca. 1 mm; connective exserted and forming a ca. 1 mm mucro; anthers 0.8-1.4 cm. Gynophore 1-2.5 cm, densely brown tomentose; gynoecium 1.4-2 cm; carpels ovoid to narrowly ovoid, 1-3 × ca. 1.5 cm, sparsely white lenticellate, dehiscing into 2 valves along both ventral and dorsal sutures, base broad, apex rounded. Seeds 1-3 per carpel, compressed ovoid, 0.8-1 × 0.6-0.8 mm. Fl. Feb-Apr, fr. Sep-Nov.
Photos used under a Creative Commons license
References:
Wu ZY, Raven PH, Hong DY (eds) (2011) Flora of China. Vol. 19 (Cucurbitaceae through Valerianaceae, with Annonaceae and Berberidaceae). Science Press, Beijing, and Missouri Bot Garden Press, St. Louis