FoI
Periyar Balsam
Share Foto info
Periyar Balsam
A Native Photo: E.S. Santhosh Kumar
Common name: Periyar Balsam
Botanical name: Impatiens periyarensis    Family: Balsaminaceae (Balsam family)

Periyar Balsam is an annual upright herb up to 40 cm tall, with four-angled, channelled, hairless stems, pale green, becoming salmon-red, and spoon-shaped, toothed extrafloral nectaries. It is named for the Periyar river. Leaves are opposite, decussate, shortly stalked (1-2 mm); blades 3-6.3 x 4.5-5 mm, lance-shaped, minutely toothed, narrowly pointed, green and velvet-hairy above, pale green and hairless beneath, with a distinct midrib. Flowers are borne in 4-5-flowered fascicles in leaf-axils; bracts about 1 × 0.5 mm. Flowers are 7-9 mm across, white to pink; flower-stalks 1.5-2 cm at anthesis, extending to 2.2 cm in fruit. Lateral sepals 4.5-5.5 x 0.5 mm, sickle-shaped; dorsal petal 4.5-5.5 × 5 mm, broadly ovate and keeled. Lateral united petals 8-9 x 4 mm, 2-lobed, with a prominent 1 mm dorsal ear. Lower sepal 6-7.5 x 3 mm, funnel-shaped, with a stout 1-2 mm spur. Stamens are 5; column about 1.5 x 2 mm; anthers yellow. Pistil about 1.5 x 1 mm, with a 5-toothed stigma. Capsules are 9-12 x 4.5 mm, spindle-shaped, containing 9-14 black, ellipsoid seeds. Periyar Balsam is known only from Kerala.

Identification credit: Tabish Photographed in Kerala.

• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,