Ayenia elegans - Elegant Ayenia

Elegant Ayenia is a large woody climbing shrub with branchlets grooved, bristly with spreading hairs or sparsely star-shaped hairy. Ayenia is named for Louis de Noailles (1713-1793) the Duke of d-Ayen. Flowers are minute, in much branched, velvet-hairy cymes in leaf axils; bracteoles subulate. Sepals are about 3 x 1 mm, ovate-Ianceolate, pointed. Petals are yellow, incurved, shorter than the sepals with a slender claw and a hooded limb, the tip of which covers fertile anthers, a long process develops from upperside of hood. Leaves are 10-18 x 6-15 cm, often broader than long, round or ovate, shortly 3-5-lobed, lobes triangular, entire or minutely toothed, abruptly tapering, membranous, star-shaped-hairy on both surfaces. Leaves are 7-9-nerved at base, midirb glandular; leaf-stalks 5 - 20 mm long, shaggy woolly. Capsules are 1.2 cm in diameter, spherical, densely covered with subulate barbed prickles. Elegant Ayenia is found in Eastern Himalaya, from Darjeeling, Sikkim, Assam Meghalaya and Manipur. Outside of India it is found in Bangladesh, China South-Central, Laos, Malaya, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam. Flowering: September-November.