FoI
Tree-Dwelling Dew-Grass
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Tree-Dwelling Dew-Grass
P Native Photo: Ashutosh Sharma
Common name: Tree-Dwelling Dew-Grass, Tree-Dwelling Spiderwort
Botanical name: Cyanotis vivipara    Family: Commelinaceae (Dayflower family)
Synonyms: Belosynapsis vivipara, Dalzellia vivipara, Tonningia vivipara

Tree-Dwelling Dew-Grass is a small herb, 10-25 cm long, growing on trees, with tiny flowers. The stem is covered with scattered rufous spreading hairs or becoming hairless in the tender plants. Leaves arise from the base and stem. Basal leaves are 3-8 x 1-2 cm, stalkless, linear or linear-lanceshaped, base narrowed, tip pointed or tapering, covered with hairy hairs; stem leaves are 1-2 x 0.2-0.5 cm, stalkless, ovate or elliptic, tip pointed, hairy. Flowering stem is 8-25 cm long, slender, bearing new plants at the tip with several small oblong-lanceshaped pointed leaves. Flower-cluster-stalks bears 2-4 flowers in umbels, arising from the leaf axils, hairy, 2-bracteate. Sepals are 3, 2-3 mm long, oblong, hairy. Petals are 3, white, fused to the middle. Stamens are 6; filaments naked, style threadlike. Capsules are inverted-lanceshaped, about 3 mm long, blunt, hairy, recurved after splitting, 3-celled, 2-seeded. Tree-Dwelling Dew-Grass is native to Western Ghats.

Identification credit: Ashutosh Sharma Photographed in Shimoga district, Karnataka.

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