Strobilanthes scrobiculatus - Pitted Coneflower

Pitted Coneflower is a small branched shrub, with older branches hairless, round, ashy-white. It appears to have a flowering cycle o Flowers are borne in numerous nearly stalkless spikes, elongating in fruit, on the naked branches from the axils of fallen leaves. Flowers are 2.5 cm long with whitish tube and limb of a beautiful blue, hairless outside, hairy inside. Lower contracted part of the tube is much shorter than the narrowly swollen portion, petals 3-4 mm long, oblong, rounded or flat and with slightly rounded--toothed margins. Stamens are 4, remaining inside the flower. Sepal-cup is about 1 cm long in flower, enlarging to 1.5 cm in fruit, glandular-hairy, tube 1.5 mm long, sepals linear, nearly blunt, densely glandular-fringed with hairs. Bracts are 5 mm long, obovate-oblong, hairy with gland-tipped hairs, bracteoles 5 mm long, linear, blunt, glandular-hairy. Leaves are 5-7 x 1.8-2.5 cm, almost all falling off before flowering-time except a few at the tops of the branches, elliptic-lanceshaped, tapering, densely marked with little lines, especially on the upper side, otherwise nearly hairless, base tapering, unequal-sided, main nerves 6-7 pairs; leaf-stalks 1.2 cm long. Capsules are rather less than 1.2 cm long, lanceshaped, pointed, 4-seeded. Pitted Coneflower is found in Western Ghats.