Talk:Strobilanthes callosa

A fact from Strobilanthes callosa appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 March 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Strobilanthes callosus, a shrub found in the hill forests of India used in folk medicines, flowers only once in eight years before dying off, exhibiting a once in a lifetime mass flowering and mass seeding life cycle?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/March.

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Description

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Botanical Name - Strobilanthes callosus

Strobilanthes, Blume.; F.B.I. IV-429. S. callosus, Nees.; F.B.I. IV-451. Brandi's Ind. Trees, 500. Gamble's Ind. Timbers, 518. Vern. Karvi, Mar.

A large shrub, sometimes attaining 6-20 ft. in height and 2 1/2 inches in diameter; branches often warted or scabrous-tubercled. Leaves opposite, 7 by 3 in., sometimes much larger, crenate, rough, conspicuously marked with five lines above, nerves 8-16 pair; petiole 2-3 in. Flowers in strobiliform spikes 1-4 in. long, often densely or laxly cymose; bracts 1/2 - 1 in. long, orbicular or elliptic. Calyx 1/2 in., in fruit often exceeding 3/4 in., sub-equally 5-lobed to the base; segments oblong, obtuse, softly hairy. Corolla tubular-ventricose, 1 1/2 in., glabrous without, very hairy within, deep blue; lobes 5, nearly equal, contorted in bud. Stamens 4; filaments hairy downwards; anthers blunt; not spurred at the base. Ovary 4-ovuled; style linear; stigma of one long linear-lanceolate branch the other minute. Capsule 3/4 by 1/3 in., seeds more than 1/3 in. long, thin, obovate, acute, densely shaggy with white inelastic adpressed hair, except on the large oblong areoles.

Tolerably common on the Kannad and Ajanta ghats in Aurangabad. In 'List of Trees, Shrubs, etc., of the Bombay Presidency,' Talbot remarks. "It covers large areas on the Konkan and N. Kanara ghats, and forms the undergrowth in many of the deciduous moist forests. Sometimes a very large shrub (30 ft., in height and 2 1/2 in. in diameter). A general flowering takes place every seven or eight years. The white glabrous bracts become covered, after the flowering is over, with viscous strongly smelling hairs. The flowers vary in colour from purple-blue to pink. A general flowering of this species in N. Kanara, took place in Sept-Oct. 1887. The capsules ripen during the cold and hot seasons, and are elastically dehiscent, making a paculiar, almost continous, niose during the shedding of the seeds in a forest of this species".

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Source: Sharfuddin Khan, M. D. Forest flora of Hyderabad State. AP Forest Division, India; 1953. Available online at the Official website of the state of Andra Pradesh Forest Department: [1]

mrigthrishna (talk) 22:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]