(Loes.) S.Y. Hu
Description
Ilex excelsa var. hypotricha is a holly of the eastern Himalaya and adjacent China, distributed through Bhutan, Nepal, NE India, Bangladesh and SW China as recorded by GBIF (CN, IN, NP, BD) on the basis of about 39 occurrences. The photographed tree was found in western Bhutan along the Mo-Chu at about 1,300 m in October. It is a component of subtropical and warm-temperate broadleaf forest, growing on humid hill slopes, along streams and forest margins, generally between about 1,000 and 2,200 m, where it occurs as an understorey to mid-canopy evergreen tree in mixed laurophyllous woodland.
It is an evergreen tree or large shrub with smooth grey bark and glabrous to finely puberulent young shoots. The leaves are alternate, leathery, elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, with an entire to remotely crenulate margin and an acuminate apex; this variety is distinguished by a thin pubescence on the lower surface, particularly along the midrib, the feature signalled by the epithet hypotricha. As in all Ilex the plants are dioecious, the small four-merous white to greenish flowers borne in axillary fascicles or short cymes, the staminate and pistillate flowers on separate trees. The fruit is a small globose red drupe containing several hard pyrenes (stones), characteristically ornamented as is diagnostic in the genus.
The genus Ilex is large and taxonomically intricate, with infraspecific variation in leaf indumentum often used to delimit varieties such as this one; the bony pyrene sculpturing remains an important systematic character. As a forest tree of moderately wide range, this taxon is not regarded as threatened, though its dependence on intact mid-elevation broadleaf forest links its fortunes to the conservation of eastern Himalayan woodland.
Author: (Loes.) S.Y. Hu · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of China Vol. 11, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, GBIF, Loesener: Monographia Aquifoliacearum