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Scentless Turmeric
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Scentless Turmeric
ative Photo: Thingnam Sophia
Common name: Scentless Turmeric, Hidden lily
Botanical name: Curcuma inodora    Family: Zingiberaceae (Ginger family)

Scentless Turmeric is a small herb with one of the showiest flowers in all Curucuma species. They are large pink. Flowers spikes are 10-16 x 4-5 cm with a distinct, violet coma, carried on flower-cluster-stalks 5-10 cm long. Coma bracts are large, 4-5.5 x 1.5 cm, tip rounded, ovate or lanceshaped. Fertile bracts are 3.5-4 x 1.5 cm, tip slightly pointed or round, not recurved, pale green with a purple patch at the tip. Flowers are 4.5-5.5 cm long, equal to the bracts. Sepal-cup tubular, 1-1.2 cm long, shortly and irregularly trilobed at tip, white, tube minutely velvet-hairy. Flower tube is about 2.5 cm long, deep purple, velvet-hairy; petals unequal, dorsal petal 1.6 x 1 cm, apiculate, lateral petals 1-1.3 x 0.5 cm, ovate-lanceshaped, deep purple, hairless. Lip is obovate, obscurely trilobed, tip notched, purple with a median bright yellow band. Leafy shoots are 20-50 cm tall, pseudostem 8-10 cm long. Leaves are distichous, 3-6, stalked; leaf-stalk 20-25 cm long; blade 15-30 x 7-12 cm, elliptic, base oblique, tip tapering. Fruit is spherical to ovoid, 1-1.2 x 0.9 cm, brown, hairy. Scentless Turmeric is endemic to Peninsular India. Flowering: May-August.
Medicinal uses: Scentless Turmeric is used by the tribals as a hair tonic and for cure of wounds.

Identification credit: M. Sabu Photographed in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra & Narsapur forest, Andhra Pradesh.

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