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Himalayan Pennywort
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Himalayan Pennywort
ative Photo: Thingnam Girija
Common name: Himalayan Pennywort • Manipuri: ꯑꯋꯥ ꯄꯦꯔꯨꯛ Awa Peruk • Mizo: Hlovaidawr • Nepali: सेतो ताप्रे Seto Taapre
Botanical name: Hydrocotyle himalaica    Family: Araliaceae (Ivy family)
Synonyms: Hydrocotyle javanica var. podantha, Hydrocotyle podantha

Himalayan Pennywort is a prostrate plant with stems, leaf-stalks and flower-head-stalks moderately to densely velvety with dark purple-brown hairs. Stem is up to 50 cm. Leaf stalks are 3-18 cm. Leaves are circular or kidney-shaped, 1.5-3.5 × 3-6 cm, shallowly 5-7-lobed, lobes triangular or rounded, both surfaces sparsely hairy or covered with purplish hairs, tip blunt-rounded, principal nerves 9. Flowers are borne in dense many-flowered umbels, which look like a head, carried on 3-8 cm long stalk, usually as long as or longer than leaf-stalks. Flower-stalks are 1-2 mm in flower, 4-7 mm in fruit. Petals are white with yellow or purplish red glands. Styles are 0.8-1 mm, spreading. Fruit is brown to purplish red, heart-shaped-spherical, 1.0-1.2 × 1.5-2 mm. Himalayan Pennywort is found in mountain valleys, shady moist grassy places in the Himalayas, from Nepal to Bhutan, Sikkim, Assam, Myanmar and China, at altitudes of 100-2200 m. Flowering: June-July.

Identification credit: Krishan Lal Photographed in Gangtok, Sikkim.

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