Fukien tea tree

Ehretia microphylla is a shrub growing to 4 m height, with long, straggling, slender branches. It is deciduous during the dry season. Its leaves are usually 10–50 mm long and 5–30 mm wide, and may vary in size, texture, colour and margin. It has small white flowers 8–10 mm in diameter with a 4–5 lobed corolla, and drupes 4–6 mm in diameter, ripening brownish orange.

The plant occurs widely in eastern and south-eastern Asia from India, Indochina, southern China, and Japan, through Malesia (including the Australian territory of Christmas Island) and New Guinea to mainland Australia (Cape York Peninsula) and the Solomon Islands. It has become an invasive weed in Hawaii where it is a popular ornamental plant and where the seeds are thought to be spread by fruit-eating birds. On Cape York Peninsula, the plant is recorded from semi-evergreen vine thickets. On Christmas Island, it favours dry sites on the terraces, and sometimes occurs in rainforest.

The plant is popular in Penjing in China. The leaves are used medicinally in the Philippines to treat cough, colic, diarrhea and dysentery.

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