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Prostrate Skullcap
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Prostrate Skullcap
ative Photo: Krishan Lal
Common name: Prostrate Skullcap
Botanical name: Scutellaria prostrata    Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)

Prostrate Skullcap is a perennial woody herb, often forming loose mats, with a thick, woody rootstock. Flowers are subtended by elliptic or ovate to broad ovate 7-13 x 3-5 mm, bracts which are entire or nearly so, densely hairy. Flower-stalks are 2-4 mm, erect, flattened. Sepal cup in flower is 1.5-2 mm, with a small scutellum, enlarging in fruit to 3-4 mm, with a 2-3 mm high scutellum. Flowers are 1.9-2.6 cm, yellow, pale lilac, white or pale cream, usually with a purple hood, spreading-erect, densely hairy with glandular and eglandular hairs. Flower-tube is 1.6-1.9 cm. Stems are prostrate, weakly ascending, 9-30 cm, slender, round-quadrangular, sometimes purplish, leafy. The plant is densely hairy. Leaves are 3-19 x 2-11 mm, triangular or ovate to broadly ovate, toothed to deeply toothed, base flat to wedge-shaped, tip pointed to blunt. Leaf-stalks are 2-14 mm. Inflorescence is 4-sided, short, condensed, in leaf axils or at branch ends. Prostrate Skullcap is found in the Himalayas, from Kashmir to Nepal, at altitudes of 2400-4500 m. Flowering: June-September.

Identification credit: Krishan Lal Photographed in Lahaul-Spiti, Himachal Pradesh.

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