Mao Dong Qing

Ilex pubescens is a small evergreen shrub of the Aquifoliaceae family growing 1 to 3 m tall, with slender greyish-brown branches that are densely covered when young in fine yellowish-grey pubescence, gradually becoming glabrous with age. Leaves are alternate, papery to thinly leathery, ovate-elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, 2 to 6 cm long, with finely serrate to crenate margins and a short pubescent petiole; both surfaces, especially the lower, are pubescent along the veins. The plant is dioecious; small four-merous flowers with pale purplish-pink petals are borne in axillary fascicles in spring. The fruit is a small globose drupe 3 to 4 mm in diameter, ripening bright red, containing four pyrenes. It grows in scrub and forest margins in southern China, Taiwan, and northern Indochina.