Botanical name: Gymnosporia montana    Family: Celastraceae (Spike-thorn family)
Synonyms: Celastrus montanus, Celastrus obovatus, Celastrus phyllacanthus

Mountain Spike Thorn is a tall shrub or a small tree, young branches often spiny, bearing leaves and flowers. Leaves are grey, leathery, hairless, very variable, obovate, oblanceolate or linear-spoon-shaped, blunt, entire or toothed, narrowing into the base, 0.5-4.5 x 0.4-2 cm. Leaf-stalks are about 3 mm long. Flower are small in axillary, dichotomous or fasciculate cymes on short branchlets, often forming terminal, elongate panicles. Flower-stalks are threadlike, bracts small, lanceshaped, pointed. Sepals are broadly elliptic-oblong, ciliate. Petals are oblong. Disc fleshy, many lobed. Ovary is hairless, circular; style deeply 2-3-cut. Capsules are globose, 4-5 mm broad, bivalved, purple. Seeds chestnut brown; arillode orange. Mountain Spike Thorn is found in South India. Flowering: October-December.

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The flower labeled Mountain Spike Thorn is ...