Needlebush

All parts are used as medicine for dysentery, diarrhea, rupture, coughs, etc. The seeds contain up to 20% oil, which is used for the manufacture of soap and as a lubricant.

Erect shrubs 1-5 m tall, monoecious, much branched; branchlets gray-brown, densely pubescent. Stipules triangular, ca. 1 mm; petiole 1-3 mm; leaf blade oblong, oblong-ovate, or obovate-oblong, rarely lanceolate, 3-8 × 1-2.5 cm, papery or subleathery, gray-green and midvein sparsely pubescent or glabrescent adaxially, greenish and densely pubescent abaxially, base cuneate to obtuse, apex obtuse, acute, shortly acuminate, or rounded; lateral veins 4-8 pairs, elevated abaxially, reticulate nerves prominent. Flowers in axillary clusters, 2-5-flowered, proximal axils mostly to all male flowers, distal axils mostly to all female flowers. Male flowers: pedicels 4-15 mm; sepals 6, narrowly oblong or oblong-obovate, 2.5-3.5 mm, spreading, green to yellowish, densely pubescent outside; stamens 3, connate into a cylindric column. Female flowers: pedicels ca. 1 mm; sepals 6, as in male, but shorter and thicker, green; ovary globose, densely pubescent, 5-10-locular; ovules 2 per locule; style column annular, shortly lobed in summit. Capsules depressed-globose, 8-15 mm in diam., 8-10-grooved, densely pubescent, reddish when mature, apex with persistent annular styles. Seeds subreniform, 3-angled, ca. 4 mm, red. Fl. Apr-Aug, fr. Jul-Nov.

Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Xizang, Yunnan, Zhejiang [Japan].

Slopes, scrub on stream banks, forest margins; 300-2200 m.

Agyneia pubera Linnaeus, Mant. Pl. 2: 296. 1771; A. impubes Linnaeus; A. pinnata Miquel; A. sinica Miquel; Bradleia pubera (Linnaeus) Roxburgh; B. sinica Gaertner; Glochidion bodinieri H. Léveillé; G. distichum Hance; G. fortunei Hance; G. fortunei var. megacarpum H. Keng; G. hayatae Croizat & H. Hara var. tsushimense Hurusawa; G. pseudo-obscurum Pam panini; G. pseudo-obscurum var. glabrum Pampanini; G. pseudo-obscurum var. lanceolatum Pampanini; G. sinicum (Gaertner) Hooker & Arnott; Nymphanthus chinensis Loureiro; Phyllanthus puberus (Linnaeus) Müller Argoviensis; P. puberus var. sinicus (Gaertner) Müller Argoviensis; P. villosus Poiret.