Kudzu Vine is a large climbing shrub, with branches
slender, clothed with fine deflexed brownish hairs. Flowers are borne
in simple racemes 8-15 inches long, dense-flowered towards the
extremity; axis stout, velvet-hairy. flower-stalks very short,
elongating in fruit, each with a pair of lanceshaped adpressed
velvet-hairy bracteoles. Calyx is 7-20 mm, hairy with yellow-brown
hairs; sepals lanceshaped, tapering, slightly longer than tube. Flowers
are purple or reddish, 1 inch long, sweet scented; standard nearly
round, 8-18 mm, notched, distinctly spurred and with yellow thickened
part at base. Leaf stalks are 4-6 inches long, brown-hairy, stipules 1
inch long, fixed by the middle, membranous, brown velvety. Leaflets are
5-7 by 4-6 inches, round-rhomboid to ovate, lateral oblique, sharply
tapering, membranous, dark-green and nearly hairless above and grey and
thinly covered with very short adpressed hairs beneath when mature.
Lateral nerves are 5-7 on either half. Pods are long elliptic, 4-14 cm
x 6-13 mm, flattened, densely covered with rusty hairs. Kudzu Vine is
found in SE Asia to Australia. Flowering: August-September.
Medicinal uses: It is a religious plant in
Arunachal Pradesh, used in traditional festival. Paste of bark applied
to cuts and wounds to stop bleeding and for quick heeling.
Identification credit: Tabish
Photographed in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh
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The flower labeled Kudzu Vine is ...