FoI
Dusky Fire-Brand Teak
Share Foto info
Dusky Fire-Brand Teak
D Native Photo: S. Kasim
Common name: Dusky Fire-Brand Teak • Anaal: Linsui • Assamese: Gonderi • Bengali: Gohara • Hindi: झटेला Jhatela, Bakar, Bharkhar • Kannada: Agnimantha • Malayalam: Munja, Knappa, Nappa • Manipuri: ꯎꯄꯣꯡꯊꯥ Upongtha • Tamil: Chelumalaron, Chedi Munnai, Erumaimunnai • Telugu: Konda manga, Kondamanga, Navuru, Nelli, Nelli chettu
Botanical name: Premna mollissima    Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)
Synonyms: Premna latifolia, Premna viburnoides, Premna mucronata

Dusky Fire-Brand Teak is a tree up to 8 m high, bark greyish-white. Leaves are simple, opposite, estipulate; leaf-stalk 2-3.5 cm, slender, velvet-hairy; blade 4-10 x 2-5 cm, ovate or elliptic ovate, base rounded, flat or heart-shaped, tip tapering, margin entire or sawtoothed, finely velvet-hairy above and hairless below, membranous; lateral nerves 4-6 pairs, slender, pinnate, prominent, raised beneath; intercostae scalariform, obscure. Flowers are bisexual, greenish-white, in corymb-ike cymes at branch-ends, up to 7 cm long. Calyx is 1.5 mm, obscurely 2 lipped, upper lip 2 and lower lip 3 lobed cup-shaped. Flowers are 4 mm across, tube 2 mm, densely hairy inside, petals ovate, blunt; stamens 4, inserted in the middle of the tube, protruding, didynamous; filaments 2 and 3 mm; anthers 0.5 mm; ovary 1 mm, superior, 4 ovuled; style 4.5 mm, linear; stigma shortly bifid. Fruit is a drupe, 4 mm across, spherical, black; seeds oblong. Dusky Fire-Brand Teak is found in India and Bangladesh. Flowering: November-February.

Identification credit: S. Kasim Photographed in Katpadi, Tamil Nadu.

• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,