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Thymelaea lythroides Barratte & Murb.

Spa.: Boalaga.   Fre.: Passerine.   Ara.: Agaras, metenan, metnan, ftitisha.

Shrub up to 100 cm in height, dioecious (sometimes with male flowers on female plants). Older stems glabrescent and without leaves. Young stems covered by a dense white tomentum, consisting of short, dense and appressed hairs, and with other hairs longer, scattered and erect-patent. Leaves appressed-imbricate at the end of young stems, but ± spaced and patent towards the base of the stems; 4-12 × 1.5-5 mm, ovate-lanceolate, flat —but with an incurved apex—, sessile, coriaceous, persistent, with slightly involute margins, with a dense and white tomentum on the adaxial surface, and glabrous and green on the abaxial surface. Inflorescences in glomeruli, with 2-12 flowers, ebracteate, located at the end of short branches. Flowers unisexual (male flowers with rudimentary ovary), 4-6.5 mm, infundibuliform, yellow or yellow-greenish; hypanthium tomentose; sepals 1-1.5 mm, ovate, obtuse, the overlapping pair of sepals with a partial indumentum on their inner face. Anthers orange. Style apical. Fruit nuciform, included in the hypanthium, with membranous pericarp and variable hairiness. Seeds 1.8-3.5 × 1.7-2.1 mm, from conical-ovoid to pyriform, with straight apex and slightly prominent chalaza, without an aril.