FoI
Scaredy Cat Plant
Share Foto info
Scaredy Cat Plant
P Native Photo: Siddarth Machado
Common name: Scaredy Cat Plant, Dog Gone, Piss-off plant • Malayalam: Kurangupacha
Botanical name: Plectranthus caninus    Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)
Synonyms: Coleus spicatus, Majana canina, Plectranthus monadelphus

Scaredy Cat Plant is a herb which is sold and marketed as a natural repellent to cats and dogs, hence the common name. It is a profusely branched herb, clothed with soft hairs. Leaves are up to 3 x 2.5 cm, obovate, rounded toothed, velvet-hairy below, fleshy; leaf-stalk to 1 cm. Flower spikes are borne at branch-ends, up to 7 cm long, woolly, bracts 8 x 5 mm, ovate, mucronate, punctuate with red glands, deciduous. Calyx is velvet-hairy out side, upper round, fringed with hairs, the lower 4 toothed, 2 mm; flower tube 5 mm, lower lip 5 mm, blue; staminal tube 8 mm; style 1.5 cm, stigma bifid. Scaredy Cat Plant is found in Peninsular India and Africa.

Identification credit: Siddarth Machado Photographed in Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu.

• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,