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Long-Fruit Hairy-Bells
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Long-Fruit Hairy-Bells
P Native Photo: Momang Taram
Common name: Long-Fruit Hairy-Bells
Botanical name: Loxostigma griffithii    Family: Gesneriaceae (Gloxinia family)
Synonyms: Chirita griffithii, Didymocarpus griffithii, Lysionotus griffithii

Long-Fruit Hairy-Bells is a perennial herb with stems up to 1 m, velvet-hairy, becoming hairless, branched. Flowers are borne in 1-5 branched cymes, 2-10-flowered, carried on flower-cluster-stalks 2-13 cm, bracts ovate to narrowly lanceshaped, 3-6 x 1-2.5 mm. Flowers are yellowish, purplish to brownish spotted inside, 3-4.2 cm, outside sparsely glandular finely velvet-hairy to velvet-hairy, inside finely velvet-hairy; tube 2.8-3 x 1.6-2 cm; upper lip lobes semiround, 5-6 x about 5 mm; lower lip lobes oblong to ovate, 4-10 x 5-8 mm. Adaxial stamens about 1.4 cm, lower ones about 1.8 cm, hairless. Pistil is 1.9-3.1 cm, hairless, style 7-12 mm. Flower-stalks are 0.8-2 cm. Sepal-cup 5-sect from near base; sepals equal, narrowly lanceshaped to broadly ovate or inverted-lanceshaped, 5-9 X 1.5-7 mm. Leaves are opposite, spread along stem, unequal to nearly equal in a pair; leaf-stalk 0.5-5 cm, finely velvet-hairy; leaf blade elliptic to ovate or obovate, often oblique, 4-19 X 1.8-10.5 cm, base oblique, margin sawtoothed to rounded toothed-minutely toothed, tip tapering to pointed. Capsule is 6.5-10 cm. Long-Fruit Hairy-Bells is found growing on trees or rocks in forests, at altitudes of 600-2600 m, Bhutan, NE India, China, Myanmar, Nepal, N Vietnam. Flowering: September-December.

Identification credit: Momang Taram Photographed in Arunachal Pradesh.

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