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Winged Boot Tree
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Winged Boot Tree
D Native Photo: Akshay Surendra
Common name: Winged Boot Tree, Bellflower Sterculia
Botanical name: Pterocymbium tinctorium    Family: Sterculiaceae (Cacao family)
Synonyms: Sterculia campanulata, Pterocymbium campanulatum

Winged Boot Tree is a tree, up to 20 m tall, bark grey-brown. Leaves are simple, alternate; stipules about 6 mm long, subulate, cauducous; leaf-stalk 3-10 cm long, slender; blade 10-15 x 7-12 cm, ovate or ovate-oblong, base heart-shaped, tip pointed or tapering, margin entire, hairless above, velvet-hairy beneath, leathery; 5-7-ribbed from the base, palmate, prominent, intercostae scalariform. Flowers are polygamous, in umbellate panicles at branch-ends; sepal-cup 1.5 x 4 cm, bell-shaped, hairless, tepals 5, lanceshaped; stamens 10 or 8, united to form a staminal column, velvet-hairy below; ovary superior, 5, free, stalkless, gibbous at base; styles short. Fruit is a follicle, 5-9 x 1.8-2.5 cm, boat shaped with a pouch-like bulging at base, hairless, membranous, 2-lobed, lower broad, round, upper linear, blunt, hairless, splitting before maturity to release the lone seed. Seed is 1 cm long, basal, ellipsoid to ovoid. Winged Boot Tree is found in Andaman islands, parts of NE India and SE Asia.

Identification credit: Akshay Surendra Photographed in McCarthy Valley, Bajalungta, Middle Andaman, Andaman and Nicobar.

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