Botanical name: Barleria cristata var. albida    Family: Acanthaceae (Acanthus family)

White Philippine Violet is a shrub, up to 2 m tall. Stems and branches are hairy, densely so at nodes. Leaf-stalks are about 1 cm, perennial leaves on long shoots 0.5-2 cm long. Leaves are papery, elliptic or lanceshaped or ovate, 5-16 cm x 1.5-5 cm, pointed, sometimes tapering, base narrowed, narrowing into wings, long hairs on both surfaces. Margins are fringed with hairs, lateral nerves 4-5 pairs. Flowers are usually 2 on leaf axils and at branch-ends, clustered in dense ovoid spikes, 4-5.5 cm long. Bracts are leaflike, stalkless. Bracteoles are lanceshaped or linear, 1-1.5 x 0.1-0.2 cm, fringed with hairs and often distantly toothed at margins, pointed, membranous, velvet-hairy, veined, mid-rib prominent. Two outer segments of calyx ovate to lanceshaped, nearly equal, 1.5-2 x 0.5-0.8 cm, brownish white when dry, with veins raised. Inner sepals are linear-lanceshaped, 7-8 x 1.5-2 mm. Flowers are white, usually 3.5-5 cm long, sometimes upto 7.5 cm, velvet-hairy outside with mixed glandular hairs. Flower-tube is cylindrical amplified at throat lower tube narrow; upper tube wide; petals 5, nearly-equal, obovate-oblong, 1-1.8 x 0.8-1.8 cm, blunt; lower lobe notched. Stamens are 2 fertile, protruding at the base of throat; filaments 2-3 cm long, velvet-hairy. Capsule is ellipsoid, 1.1-1.9 x 0.3-0.6 cm, 4-seeded. White Philippine Violet is found in East India. Flowering: October-March.

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The flower labeled White Philippine Violet is ...