Botanical name: Orophea malabarica    Family: Annonaceae (Sugar-apple family)

Malabar Orophea is a shrub, with young shoots hairy. Leaves are oblong or elliptic-oblong, pointed, tapering or blunt, base blunt or wedge-shaped, 5.5-9 x 2-3.5 cm; lateral veins 4 or 5 pairs, hairless; leaf-stalk 2 mm long, adpressed woolly. Flowers are white, often with pinkish tinge, in 2-3 flowered in leaf-axils or extra-in leaf-axils, hairy flower-cluster-stalks; bracts ovate-tapering, densely hairy outside. Outer petals are ovate-round, woolly along margin, 3 mm across, inner hairless, up to 4 mm long, nectaries narrowly oblong, vertical. Stamens 6, uniseriate, all fertile. Carpels 3, hairless, ovules 2; style hairy. Flower-stalks are slender, up to 1.5 cm long, densely hairy. Sepals are ovate-rounded, minutely woolly outside. Fruitlets are stalkless, 1-3, spherical, 8-10 mm across, creamy yellow with pink shades. Malabar Orophea is endemic to Southern Western Ghats. Flowering: March-April.

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The flower labeled Malabar Orophea is ...