Glochidion heyneanum - Velvety Melon Featherfoil

Velvety Melon Featherfoil is a small tree or large shrub up to 9 m with sflattened branches and leaves. Bark is brown, rough. Wood is brownish- white, soft. All parts are evenly to densely whitish- to rusty-velvety. Leaf-stalks are 2-3 mm long. Leaves are elliptic-ovate to elliptic-oblong, 5-10 x 2-6 cm, pointed or shortly obtusely long-pointed, wedge-shaped or rounded-wedge-shaped at the base. Male flowers are carried on slender stalks 5-9 mm long. Sepals are 6, oblong-lanceshaped, 2-3 mm long, blunt, thick, yellow. Stamen-column (of 3 fused sessile anthers) is 1.5 mm high, with 3 separate conical produced connectives, yellow. Female flowers are carried on stalks 1-2 mm long, extending to 4-6 mm in fruit. Sepals are shorter than the male sepals, green, otherwise similar to them, persistent. Ovary is 4-7-celled, 8-14-lobed, 1 mm diameter. Styles are fused into a column 1.5 x 1 mm, 4-7-toothed at the apex, pubescent, not or scarcely enlarging in fruit. Fruit is depressed-globose to discoid, 8-14-lobed, 4 x 10 mm, evenly velvety with the style persistent in the depression. Seeds irregularly obovoid, 3-4 x 4-5 mm, smooth, shiny, red, often remaining attached to the axis after the splitting of the fruit. Velvety Melon Featherfoil is found in the Himalayas, from Kashmir to Bhutan, Bengal, N. Burma, and Western Ghats at altitudes of 150-1800 m. Flowering: May-July.