FoI
Yellow Cuphea
Share Foto info
Yellow Cuphea
P Introduced Photo: Manjula Sridhar
Common name: Yellow Cuphea
Botanical name: Cuphea flava    Family: Lythraceae (Crape Myrtle family)
Synonyms: Cuphea idiotricha, Cuphea brachiata

Yellow Cuphea is a subshrub 30-80 cm tall, with stems erect to decumbent, internodes 0.5-2 cm long. Yellow flowers are borne in racemes 8-15 cm long. Flowers are alternate; flower-stalks 2-4 mm long; flower-tube 7-9 mm long; spur blunt to sac, deflexed; outer surface yellow-green, usually hairless, rarely velvet-hairy and glandular; inner surface hairy behind the stamens, densely hairy around the ovary. Petals are 6, yellow, almost equal, two dorsal 4.5-5 x 2-2.7 mm, obovate, four ventral 4.9-5.4 x 1.8-2.8 mm, narrow-obovate to obovate. Stamens are free in the upper third of the floral tube, pistil 5-6.8 mm long. Leaves are opposite, sometimes 3-whorled, papery to leathery, stalkless to nearly so, blades 6-15 x 2-8 mm, broad-ovate to ovate-oblong, rarely narrow-ovate, tip pointed, base blunt, somewhat heart-shaped, margin plane to curled, usually glandular-fringed with hairs, hairless on both surfaces. Yellow Cuphea is native to Brazil, cultivated elsewhere.

Identification credit: Manjula Sridhar Photographed in cultivation at Belathur, Tamil Nadu.

• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,