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Round-Petal Mussaenda
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Round-Petal Mussaenda
P Native Photo: Thingnam Girija
Common name: Round-Petal Mussaenda, Large-Leaf Mussaenda • Nepali: धोबिनी Dhobini • Mizo: Va-kep
Botanical name: Mussaenda macrophylla    Family: Rubiaceae (Coffee family)
Synonyms: Mussaenda calycina, Mussaenda hispida, Mussaenda kotoensis

Round-Petal Mussaenda is an erect or somewhat climbing shrub with stout branches and rufous hairs. Flowers are orange with round-ovate petals with a short point at the tip, throat hairy, and a hairy flower-tube 2-2.5 cm long. Sepals are relatively large, 1.2-2 cm long, lanceshaped, ligulate, or inverted-lanceshaped, densely to moderately bristly. Leaves are opposite; leaf-stalk 4-35 mm, sparsely hairy to becoming hairless Leaf blade is drying membranous to papery, green to brownish, elliptic-oblong, elliptic, or ovate, 12-21 x 8-11 cm, both surfaces sparsely bristly to hairy on blade and moderately hairy along principal veins, base wedge-shaped to blunt, tip pointed to tapering; secondary veins 6-8 pairs, tertiary venation netveined; stipules deciduous, ovate to triangular, 5-8 mm, sparsely brown hairy to becoming hairless, deeply 2-lobed, lobes pointed to tapering. Flowers are borne in lax cymes, 6-15 cm, hairy, stalkless with arching lateral axes; bracts lanceshaped or 2- or 3-parted, 5-10 mm, blunt to tapering. Round-Petal Mussaenda is found in Eastern Himalayas, from Nepal to Sikkim, NE India, Burma, Yunnan, at altitudes up to 1300 m. Flowering: June-July.

Identification credit: Tabish Photographed in Andro, Manipur.

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