Botanical name: Lepidagathis sabui    Family: Acanthaceae (Acanthus family)

Spiked Lepidagathis is a perennial, prostrate, rigid herb. The species is named in honour of Prof. M. Sabu, Department of Botany, University of Calicut, Kerala. Rootstock is woody, rooting at basal nodes, nodes swollen, internodes 2.2-3.2 cm long. Stem is creeping up to 1 m long, cylindrical, (four-edged and winged in vegetative state) whitish, hairless. Leaves are stalkless; blades 2.0-2.8 cm x 2.0-3.5 mm, linear, hairless, base narrowed, margin entire, tip pointed, spiny at tip. Flowers are borne in spikes in leaf-axils, solitary, 4-sided, 2.0-2.8 cm long, compact, hairless, 5-10-flowered, rising up. Bracts are lanceshaped, 1.0-1.3 x 0.3-0.4 cm, base wedge-shaped, margin entire, tip recurved spine-tipped. Sepal-cup is 5-partite, sepals unequal, tip spiny-pointed. Flowers are 1.1-1.3 cm long, pinkish, tube 4.5-5.5 mm long, hairless; deeply 2-lipped; upper lip broad, rounded, 2-toothed, 3.5-4.5 mm long with horizontally pink striations all over in inner side, hairless inside, finely velvet-hairy outer side; lower lip deeply divided into 3 unequal lobes, 4.5-5.5 mm long; throat blotched with yellow in the middle with horizontally pink striations along either side within. Stamens are 4, didynamous; filaments 3.0-5.0 mm long, style slender, curved, 1.2-1.3 cm long. Capsule is lanceshaped, 5.8-6.0 x 2.4-2.5 mm, pointed at tip, brownish-yellow, hairless. Spiked Lepidagathis grows on lateritic plateaus of south Konkan region of Maharashtra.

Your name:
Your email:
Your comments
The flower labeled Spiked Lepidagathis is ...