Botanical name:Premna serratifoliaFamily:Lamiaceae (Mint family) Synonyms: Premna obtusifolia
Headache Tree is an evergreen shrub, 1-8 m tall.
Bark is grayish brown, branches and branchlets bluntly four-edged,
slightly velvet-hairy and hairless when mature. Leaves are simple
opposite, oblong-ovate or ovate-elliptic, 6-18 x 3-6.5 cm across,
base rounded or blunt, margins entire or slightly wavy, tip shallow
tapering, papery, dark green hairless above, slightly paler,
velvet-hairy on the veins beneath, lateral veins 5-7 on either side
of the midvein, veins arcuate at margins impressed above and
prominent beneath, leaf-stalk slender, stout, channeled about
2-4 cm long, exstipulate. Flowers are borne at branch-ends, in
corymbs, symmetrically branched, composed of 4-8 decussate
opposite cymes, velvet-hairy, about 4-11 x 5-16 cm across,
flower-cluster-stalks velvet-hairy, bluntly four-edged, about 1-4 cm
long, bracts linear lanceshaped, about 1 cm long, bractlets linear
about 5 mm long, Flowers are numberous, bisexual, zygomorphic,
flower-stalks about 1 mm long, sepal-cup cup-shaped, 5 toothed,
2 lipped, about 2 x 2 mm across, teeth pointed. Flowers are
funnel-shaped, 4 lobed, 2 lipped, lobes subequal, oblong, blunt
about 2 mm long, hairless outside, greenish white, flower tube about
3 x 2 mm across, densely velvet-hairy in the throat, stamens 4,
didynamous, filaments hairless, thread-like, hairless, about 3-4 mm long,
style thread-like, about 5 mm long. Fruit is fleshy, almost spherical,
2-3 mm in diameter, green and purplish black when ripe, fruiting sepal-cup
saucer shaped, membranous. Flowering: April-October.
Identification credit: Shrikant Ingalhalikar
Photographed in Achara, Malvan, Maharashtra.
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The flower labeled Headache Tree is ...