Camellia punctata (Kochs) Cohen Stuart

Shrubs 1-4 m tall. Young branches grayish brown with white macula, glabrescent; current year branchlets slender, densely white appressed pubescent. Petiole 2-4 cm, densely puberulent; leaf blade elliptic to oblong-ovate, 4-8 × 1.7-2.5 cm, papery to thinly leathery, abaxially pale green and villous along midvein, adaxially dark green and hirtellous along midvein, base broadly cuneate, margin shallowly undulate serrulate, apex bluntly acuminate to caudate. Flowers axillary, solitary or paired. Pedicel ca. 3 mm; bracteoles 5, covering pedicel, semiorbicular, 0.5-1.5 mm, glabrous. Sepals 5, suborbicular, 3-4 mm, crustaceous, glabrous, margin membranous. Petals 5-7, white, broadly obovate, 7-12 × 6-10 mm, outside white farinose-puberulent, basally connate for 2-3 mm, apex rounded. Stamens ca. 1.1 cm, glabrous; outer filament whorl basally connate for 4-6 mm into a fleshy tube. Gynoecium 1.5-1.7 cm. Ovary densely white tomentose; style 1-1.3 cm, glabrous, apically 3-parted for 3-5 mm. Capsule globose, 1-1.5 cm in diam., 1-loculed and l-seeded; pericarp ca. l mm thick, thinly leathery, splitting into 3 valves; columella abortive. Seed brown, globose, ca. 1 cm in diam. Fl. Feb, fr. Oct.

W Sichuan.

● Forest margins, thickets; (400-)1500-2700 m.

Thea punctata Kochs, Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 27: 584. 1900.