Common name: Yellow Flax, Golden girl, Basanti बसंती (Hindi)
Botanical name: Reinwardtia indica Family: Linaceae (Linseed family)
Always rewarding is to find a shrub that produces showy flowers during the
cool winter months. Midday in December or January you may witness as many as
two dozen yellow flowers that are open. Each golden-yellow flower, 2" wide,
lasts that one day and is described as being fugacious, meaning that the
corolla withers and falls off easily. It commemorates Caspar Georg Carl
Reinwardt (1773-1854), a Prussian-born Dutch botanist who held important
positions and professorships in The Netherlands but also served as the founder
and first director of agriculture of the botanic garden at Bogor (Buitenzorg)
in Java, then a Dutch colony. Looking face on, the corolla is composed of five
petals fused to form the 2-cm tube. The corolla's golden-yellow color is
improved by the presence of fine reddish veins; such lines are termed nectar
guides or nectar lines, because they typically communicate to pollinating
insects where to go to find a nectar reward. The five corolla lobes are
cleverly overlapped (imbricate) Emerging from the floral tube are observed
three curiously shaped green stigmas on three styles nearly two centimeters in
length.
| Photographed in Mussoorie |
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