Biophytum poterioides - Red Little Tree Plant

Red Little Tree Plant Annuals, stem slender, up to 15 cm long. Flowers are long-styled. Petals are inverted-lanceshaped, 8-10 x 4-5 mm, tip flat, limb brick red-flame or pink. Shorter stamens 2 mm long, hairless; the longer 3.5 mm long, finely velvet-hairy. Sepals are lanceshaped or narrowly lanceshaped, 4-4.5 x 0.75-1 mm, half as long as flower, 6-nerved, longer than capsules, glandular hairy outside, hairless within. Style is 0.25-2.8 mm long; stigma flattened, rounded toothed-bifid. Flower-cluster-stalk 1.5-5 cm long, bristlyly hairy, eglandular. Bracts ovate, 2.5-3 mm long, bristlyly hairy, intermingled with a few glandular hairs, tip tapering. Flower-stalks 1.5-2 mm long, hairless or occasionally with 1-5 glandular trichomes. Leaves are 4-15 jugate, axis slightly winged, 2.8-9.5 cm long, sparsely patently bristly and septately glandular hairy. Leaflets are often overlapping, 3-10 x 4-5 mm, last one obovate, oblique, midrib eccentric; others oblong, lateral nerves 10-15 pairs, oblique to midribs, inprominent. Fruits are 4-4.5 x 3-3.5 mm, apically fringed with hairs on the ribs. Red Little Tree Plant is endemic to Tamil Nadu. It usually grows in waste lands and wet arable land at elevations of 100-400 m. Flowering: August-January.