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Rusty Pongam Creeper
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Rusty Pongam Creeper
P Native Photo: C. Rajasekar
Common name: Rusty Pongam Creeper
Botanical name: Millettia rubiginosa    Family: Fabaceae (Pea family)

Rusty Pongam Creeper is a large woody climbers with stem yellow velvet-hairy. Leaves are pinnately 3-5-foliolate; leaflets to 20 x 8 cm, ovate-oblong, tapering at tip; minutely golden brown hairy, leaf-stalk to 10 cm long; stipule ovate; stipel thread-like. Flowers are borne in leaf-axils, in simple or branched racemes; bracts ovate. Sepal tube is bell-shaped, 3 mm long, minutely lobed. Standard petals is 1.3 x 1.0 cm, obovate, notched, densely fulvous hairy on back; wings are 1 cm long, oblong, with two patches of golden hairs; keel similar to wings; stamens 9 + 1; anthers uniform. Pods are about 8 x 4.5 cm, obovate, compressed, woody, densely hairy; seeds 1-3, compressed, ovoid. Rusty Pongam Creeper is endemic to Southern Western Ghats. Flowering: September-November.

Identification credit: C. Rajasekar Photographed in Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu.

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