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Bindweed Rattleweed
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Bindweed Rattleweed
ative Photo: Anurag Sharma
Common name: Bindweed Rattleweed
Botanical name: Crotalaria evolvuloides    Family: Fabaceae (Pea family)

Bindweed Rattleweed is is perennial prostrate herb, up to a foot cm long, sometimes woody at base. Stems are much branched, branches slender, trailing, terete, younger ones slightly channelled, hairy. Leaves are simple, alternate, 1.7-3.5 x 1-2 cm, elliptic, elliptic-ovate, oblong-lanceolate, round-oblong, or linear-lanceolate, broad and oblique at base, pointed, blunt, rounded or rarely slightly flat and mucronulate at tip. Leaves becoming hairless above, paler and velvet-hairy beneath, especially along the veins, margins involute, main lateral veins 4-7 pairs, prominent below and joining intramarginally. Stipules are lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, 1.5-2.5 mm long, long-pointed at tip, deflexed. Leaf-stalks are 1-2 mm long, velvet-hairy. Flower racemes are leaf-opposed or at branch ends, carried on 1.5-9.0 cm long, pubescent, stout stalks. Flowers are 1-5, 5-9 x 3-6 mm, carried on 2-4 mm long, velvet-hairy stalks, bracts subulate, ovate-lanceolate or heart-shaped, bracteoles 2, linear or linear-lanceolate, more than 1 mm long. Calyx is deeply 5-lobed, sepals equal, 4.5-6.0 x about 1 mm, lanceshaped, long-pointed at tip, villous, tube about half the length of lobes. Petals are yellow, slightly exserted, vexillum obovate-oblong or orbicular, 6-8 x 3-8 mm, claw less than 3 mm long, curved or straight, glabrous or pubescent along the midvein. Wing petals are obovate-oblong, 5-7 x 2.0-2.5 mm, claw more than 3 mm long, keel petals 6.5-7.5 x 4.5-5.0 mm with short twisted beak. Stamens with longer anthers oblong, 1.0-1.5 mm long and shorter anthers ovoid, ca 0.5 mm long. Ovary is oblong, 3.5-5.0 mm long. Pods are stalkless, oblong or obovate-oblong, 1.0-1.5 cm x about 5 mm, hirsute, deflexed, seeds 6-10, kidney-shaped, 1.5-2.0 x 0.5-2.0 mm, black. Bindweed Rattleweed is found in Peninsular India and Sri Lanka.

Identification credit: Anurag Sharma Photographed at Nandi Hills, Karnataka.

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