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Wrinkled Leaf Isodon
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Wrinkled Leaf Isodon
ative Photo: Thingnam Girija
Common name: Wrinkled Leaf Isodon • Nepali: मेरत्ति Meratti
Botanical name: Isodon rugosus    Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)
Synonyms: Plectranthus rugosus, Isodon plecranthoides, Rabdosia rugosa

Wrinkled Leaf Isodon is an aromatic, much branched shrub, 1-5 ft tall. Stems are erect with rather slender quadrangular leafy branches. Leaves are broad-ovate, variable in size, 1.5-7 cm long, 1-3 cm wide, wrinkled, usually green or dark above with few branched hairs and white below with a very dense covering of small hairs. Leaf margins are toothed, and the stalk is up to 2.5 cm long, but usually much less. Flowers are borne in cymes on slender lateral branches, lax, forming often leafy racemes. Flower-stalks are slender up to 6 mm, erect or spreading. Sepal cup in flower is 2-3.5 mm, indistinctly 2-lipped, obliquely bellshaped. Teeth are short, nearly equal, broad triangular. Sepal cup in fruit is up to 6 mm, curved, spreading. Flowers are white tinged or spotted pink or violet, about 6 mm long, tube short included in sepal cup, somewhat swollen at the base. Lips are diverging, lower longer than upper. Nutlets are pale brown to dark brown, oblong, 1.5 x 1 mm. Flowering: March-October.

Identification credit: H.B. Naithani, Gurcharan Singh Photographed in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand & Manali, Himachal Pradesh.

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