Aeschynanthus stenosepalus - Narrow-Sepal Blushwort

Narrow-Sepal Blushwort is a perennial herb with stems 60-100 cm, hairless. Flowers are red, 2.5-3.2 cm, outside hairless, inside glandular finely velvet-hairy, without clusters of hairs, mouth slightly to strongly oblique; limb indistinctly 2-lipped; upper lip erect, 3-4 mm; lower lip 3-4 mm. Stamens are protruding; filaments about 1 cm; anthers coherent in pairs at tip, about 1.2 mm; staminode about 1.6 mm. Pistil about 1.6 cm, style about 2 mm. Sepal-cup is green, sometimes tinged red, 5-parted from base; sepals lanceshaped-linear, 3-7 x 0.6-0.8 mm, outside hairless. Flowers are borne in cymes in leaf-axils, 1-3-flowered; flower-cluster-stalk 2.2-5 cm; bracts usually falling off, green, linear, 2-6 x 0.8-1 mm. Flower-stalks are 5-11 mm, hairless. Leaves are opposite; leaf-stalk 2-5 mm; leaf blade narrowly elliptic to lanceshaped or ovate, 2.2-6 X 0.8-2.3 cm, leathery to papery, hairless, above drying slightly wrinkled, below few dotted, base wedge-shaped to rounded, margin entire, tip long tapering to with a tail; lateral veins indistinct. Capsules are 5.4-8.4 cm. Seeds with 1 hairlike appendage at each end, appendages 0.8-1.2 mm. Narrow-Sepal Blushwort is found growing on trees, rocks in forest margins, at altitudes of 1500-2500 m, in East Himalaya, China South-Central, Myanmar, Tibet. Flowering: July-October.