FoI
Heart-Leaf Velvet Bur
Share Foto info
Heart-Leaf Velvet Bur
ative Photo: J. M. Garg
Common name: Heart-Leaf Velvet Bur, Heart-Leaf Priva
Botanical name: Priva cordifolia    Family: Verbenaceae (Verbena family)
Synonyms: Buchnera cordifolia, Priva abyssinica, Priva leptostachya

Heart-Leaf Velvet Bur is an erect, perennial herb, growing up to 1 m tall. The plant iss branched with prominently elongated fruiting branches. Stem is quadrangular, velvety with hooked hairs, especially at nodes. Leaves are ovate, ovate-triangular to elliptic, 3-6 cm long, 2-5 cm broad, toothed, blunt, nearly heart-shaped or truncate at the base, velvety with hooked hairs. Leaf stalks are 1-2 cm long. Spike-like flower-racemes are 10-20 cm long, increasing up to 30 cm in fruit, interrupted, distantly flowered. Flowers are white, slaver form, rarely violetish, about 1 cm across, nearly stalkless. Sepal-tube is cylindrical, minutely toothed, 6-8 mm long, 2-2.5 mm broad, increasing up to 8 mm in breadth in fruit and becoming almost globose with narrow acutish mouth, persistent, velvety with hooked hairs, looking like a velvety burr. Flowers are 8-12 mm long, tube about as long or slightly exceeding the calyx. Flowers are 2-lipped with 5, unequal petals. Fruit is 4-5 mm long, broadly obcordate, enclosed within inflated, persistent calyx. Flowering: all year.

Identification credit: Chitra Shanker
Photographed in Talakona forest, Andhra Pradesh.
• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,