Uvaria hamiltonii - Eastern Uvaria

Eastern Uvaria is a large woody climbing shrub, with brilliant red flowers. Flowers are bisexual or unisexual, usually solitary or 2-3 fascicled, extra-in leaf-axils or in leaf-axils, brick red, about 5-6 cm in diameter, flower-stalks woolly, about 2.5-4 cm long, buds top-shaped, bract, basal, nearly round, leaf-like, about 0.5-1 cm long. Sepals are 3, broadly ovate or triangular, base fused, tip blunt, reflexd, fulvous brown woolly outside, velvet-hairy inside. Petals are 6, in 2 series, nearly equal, obovate, tip curved inwards, blunt, leathery, brick red, brown woolly on both sides of the curved tip, about 2.3-3 x 1.2-1.5 cm across, inner petals almost similar as outer petals. Stamens are many, about 3-4 mm long, anthers linear, nearly stalkless. Branchlets are softly rusty woolly, when young, becoming hairless when mature, often circinate. Leaves are simple, alternate, obovate-oblong or elliptic-oblong, 15-24 x 6-11 cm across, base slightly heart-shaped or rounded, margin entire, tip deeply pointed, shallow tapering, papery, membranous, dark green, nearly hairless paler densely rufous star-shaped velvet-hairy beneath, lateral veins 18-25 on either side of the midrib. Leaf-stalk is softly woolly, about 0.3-0.5 cm long. Eastern Uvaria is found in Eastern Himalayas, from Nepal to NE India, Burma, and Thailand, at altitudes of 300-600 m. It is also found in Andaman and Odissa.