Botanical name: Dobinea vulgaris    Family: Anacardiaceae (Cashew family)

Common Dobinea is a shrub, 1-3 m tall; branchlets minutely velvet-hairy, mostly noticed by its enlarged pale pinkish bracts enclosing the fruit.Flowers are borne in panicles, at branch-ends, about 18 cm, minutely velvet-hairy. Male flowers are subtended by linear bracteole; sepal-cup bell-shaped, 4-lobed; petals 4, clawed; stamens 8, ones opposite to sepals longer; pistillode present. Female flowers subtended by linear bract; sepal-cup, petals, and staminodes lacking; disk annular; ovary ovoid, about 1.5 mm in diam., style longer than ovary, recurved. Leaves are opposite; leaf-stalk 0.5-1.4 cm, minutely velvet-hairy; leaf blade oblong-lanceshaped, 7.5-11 x 2.3-3.5 cm, papery, sparsely finely velvet-hairy or becoming hairless on both surfaces, base rounded to wedge-shaped, margin minutely toothed, tip tapering. Fruit stalk is adnate to enlarged floral bract, bract membranous, grayish white, nearly round, 1-1.3 cm in diameter, margin minutely toothed and fringed with hairs, tip flat to notched, with a short sharp point, netveined; fruit slightly compressed, 2-2.5 mm in diam. Common Dobinea is found in the hill forests at altitudes of 1300-1400 m, in Central & E. Himalaya to China (NW. Yunnan).

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The flower labeled Common Dobinea is ...