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Andaman Kanak Champa
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Andaman Kanak Champa
D Native Photo: Joju P. Alappatt
Common name: Andaman Kanak Champa • Andaman: Makchun
Botanical name: Pterospermum aceroides    Family: Sterculiaceae (Cacao family)
Synonyms: Pterospermum acerifolium auct. non (L.) Willd.

Andaman Kanak Champa is a tree 12-16 m tall, with young portions covered with a thin felted layer of minute white velvety hairs. Leaves are 20-28 x 11-16 cm, obovate to oblong, heart-shaped at base with somewhat unequal lobes, tapering at tip, entire, leathery, hairless above, pale whitish star-shaped-velvet-hairy beneath; nerves 11-14. Jjuvenile leaves are much larger and palmately lobed; leaf-stalks 1-2 cm long, stout. Flowers are 4-5 cm long; bracts broadly ovate, woolly, thick. Sepals are 5, 3.5-5 x 0.4-0.6 cm, recurved, scurfy woolly outside, velvet-hairy inside. Petals are 5, white, 3-4 cm long, obovate. Stamens are 15, as long as the petals or shorter; staminodes 5, longer than the stamens. Ovary is 5-locular, densely silky; styles shorter than stamens; stigmas club-shaped. Capsules are 12-18 x 3-4 cm, hairless, black when mature. Seeds are many, in two rows, about 1 x 1 cm, somewhat rhomboid; wing 3-4 cm long, narrowed towards tip. Andaman Kanak Champa is found in Andaman Islands and Myanmar. Flowering: October-March.

Identification credit: Joju P. Alappatt Photographed in Port Blair, South Andamans,

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