Common Poison Bush

Cultivated for medicine.

Shrubs to 5 m tall. Branchlets compressed when young, terete with age. Petiole 2-6 mm; leaf blade mostly obovate, occasionally elliptic, 4-10 X 2-7 cm, lateral veins 6-10 pairs. Inflorescences sessile or subsessile, clustered, glabrous or puberulent, usually many flowered; bracts brown or distal ones pinkish, ovate. Sepals ovate to very narrowly ovate. Corolla white to pink, tube 0.8-1.3 cm, glabrous or puberulent outside, hairy inside; lobes broadly ovate, 2-4.5 mm. Berry purplish black, globose, 2.5-3 cm in diam. Seeds semiglobose or semi-ellipsoid, 0.8-1.2 cm. 2n = 22.

Beijing [native of S Africa].

Cestrum oppositifolium Lamarck, Tabl. Encycl. 2: 5, t. 112, fig. 2. 1794.