- Scientific Name: Ilex chinensis Sims
- Ref: Bot. Mag. t. 2043. 1819.
- Chinese Common Name: 冬青 dōngqīng
- Family: Aquifoliaceae
- Genus: Ilex
- Distribution: Evergreen broad-leaved forests, forest margins on mountain slopes; sea level to 2000 m. Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang [Japan].
Trees evergreen, to 15 m tall; bark gray-black. Current year’s branchlets gray, terete, thinly angular; older branchlets glabrous, with crescent-shaped, convex leaf scars; lenticels obscure, small. Plants glabrous, or sometimes villous on terminal buds, petioles, and adaxial midvein of young leaves of male plant. Petiole 8-10 mm, flat or narrowly sulcate adaxially; leaf blade deep brown, shiny when dry adaxially, elliptic or lanceolate, rarely ovate, 5-11 × 2-4 cm, thinly leathery to leathery, glabrous, rarely adaxially pilose on midvein when young, midvein flat adaxially, lateral veins 6-9 pairs, distinct abaxially, obscure adaxially, base cuneate or obtuse, margin crenate, or sometimes young leaf serrate, apex acuminate, acumen 5-10 mm. Inflorescences: cymes, solitary, axillary on current year’s branchlets, glabrous. Male inflorescences: cymes of order 3-5, 7-24-flowered; peduncles 7-14 mm; secondary axis 2-5 mm; pedicels ca. 2 mm, glabrous; flowers purplish or purple-red, 4- or 5-merous; calyx shallowly cup-shaped, lobes broadly deltoid, ciliate; corolla rotate, ca. 5 mm in diam., petals reflexed at anthesis, ca. 2.5 × 2 mm, basally slightly connate; stamens shorter than petals, anthers elliptic; rudimentary ovary conical, inferior to 1 mm. Female inflorescences: cymes of order 2 or 3, 3-7-flowered; peduncles 3-10 mm, compressed; secondary axis poorly developed; pedicels 6-10 mm; calyx and corolla as in male flowers; staminodes ca. 1/2 as long as petals, sterile anthers cordate; ovary ovoid, stigma thickly discoid, inconspicuously 4- or 5-lobed. Fruit red, narrowly globose, 1-1.2 cm, 6-8 mm in diam.; pyrenes 4 or 5, narrowly lanceolate, 9-10 mm, ca. 2.5 mm in diam., abaxially smooth, concave, trigonous in cross section, endocarp thickly leathery. Fl. Apr-Jul, fr. Jul-Dec. (Flora of China)
