Grewia villosa - Hairy Crossberry

Hairy Crossberry is a small shrub, about 2-3 m tall. Stem with ash-grey bark, young twigs covered with dense fine star-shaped tomentum. Leaves with 1-2.5 cm long, thread-like, densely star-shaped hairy leaf-stalk; blade rugose above, densely soft hairy beneath, ovate to broadly ovate or narrowly to broadly round or somewhat oblate, 1.4-7 cm long, 1.4-7.5 cm broad, 5-costate, basal 2 nerves somewhat indistinct, somewhat heart-shaped to heart-shaped at the base, margin scalloped (rounded toothed-sawtoothed), each tooth with bunch of long hairs, tip blunt-apiculate, rarely notched; stipules leaf-like, ovate-oblong, about 1 cm long, densely hairy outside. Flower cymes are 4-6-flowered, umbellate, flower-cluster-stalks in leaf-axils, 0.8-1.5 cm long, densely hairy. Flowers are whitish-yellow, about 2 cm across; flower-stalk 5-8 mm long; bracts elliptic-lanceshaped, about 7-8 mm long. Sepals are inverted-lanceshaped, 8-10 mm long, about 2.5 mm broad, hairy outside, pointed. Petals are narrowly obovate, claw minute, densely fringed with hairs around gland, limb about 5 mm long, about 2 mm wide, dull yellow, notched to retuse. Stamens are 25-30, filaments about 5 mm long. Style about 3-4 mm long, star-shaped hairy, stigma 4-lobed. Drupe dorsoventrally somewhat compressed, unlobed, subspherical, about 1 cm in diameter, about 8 mm long, heart-shaped at the base, densely hairy, yellow-brown or coppery red. Hairy Crossberry is found in Pakistan, W & S India, tropical Africa, Arabia, Egypt, Cape Verde Isles and East Indies.