Strobilanthes rhombifolia - Rhombic-Leaf Coneflower

Rhombic-Leaf Coneflower is a perennial herb or subshrub, strongly anisophyllous. Flowers are blue, 4-4.5 cm, outside sparsely gland-tipped hairy but becoming hairless; tube basally cylindric and about 2 mm wide for about 1 cm then widened to 1.2-1.7 cm at mouth; lobes nearly round, about 6 x 7 mm. Sepal-cup is nearly equally 5-lobed to base; sepals linear-elliptic, 7-12 x about 1.2 mm, velvet-hairy and with stalkless glands. Stamens are 4, not protruding, style about 2.7 cm. Flowers are borne in leaf-axils, in flower-heads borne on simple or 2-3-furcately branched flower-cluster-stalks, 2-10 cm. Flower-cluster-stalks are grooved, bifariously velvet-hairy with trichomes in sulci; sterile bracts leaflike, ovate, about 0.5 x 0.5 mm, relatively persistent. Floral bracts are obovate to oblong-obovate, about 6 x 1.5 mm, soon scarious and falling off. Stems are 4-angled, erect, hairless. Leaf-stalks are 0-1 cm but apical leaves stalkless; leaf blade rhomboidal-elliptic, 2-15 x 1.5-10 cm, both surfaces green and with abundant cystoliths, secondary veins about 6 on each side of midvein, base wedge-shaped and shortly decurrent onto leaf-stalk, margin sawtoothed, tip pointed. Rhombic-Leaf Coneflower is found in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, and Tibet. Flowering: December-January.