Elaeocarpus hainanensis - Fringed Bell Tree

Fringed Bell Tree is a shrub or small tree, up to 5 m tall.Flowers are borne in racemes in axils of current leaves, 5-8 cm, 2-6-flowered in upper part. Flower-stalks are 2-5 cm, bracts stalkless, persistent, leaflike, ovate or elliptic, 1-1.6 x 0.7-1 cm, veins and veinlets prominent, margin toothed, base rounded or eared. Flowers are 3-4 cm in diameter. Sepals are 5, lanceshaped, 1.2-2 cm, below finely velvet-hairy, velvet-hairy on midvein and upper 1/2 only. Petals are 5, white, about as long as sepals, obovate, fringed with hairs along margin, below densely rust-colored yellow woolly at base, above woolly, tip laciniate; petals 30-46, 4-6 mm. Stamens are 63-75, about as long as petals, finely velvet-hairy; anthers with awn about 4 mm. Leaves are clustered at twig tips; leaf-stalk 1-2 cm; leaf blade narrowly lanceshaped, inverted-lanceshaped, or narrowly oblong, 7-15 x 1.5-3 cm, papery, below velvet-hairy, above hairless or slightly velvet-hairy on midvein only, lateral veins 14-30 per side, prominent on both surfaces, base wedge-shaped and tapered toward end, decurrent, margin finely toothed, tip tapering. Fruit is spindle-shaped, 4-5 cm, about 1.2 cm in diameter, both ends tapering; endocarp hard. Fringed Bell Tree is native to China (SE Yunnan, Guangdong, S Guangxi) to Indo-China. Flowering: June-July.