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Andaman Coneflower
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Andaman Coneflower
P Native Photo: Mohina Macker
Common name: Andaman Coneflower
Botanical name: Strobilanthes andamanensis    Family: Acanthaceae (Acanthus family)

Andaman Coneflower is a wiry gregarious shrub 1-2 ft tall, which is easily identified by its yellow flowers, a rarity in strobilanthes. Flowers are swollen in the middle, with 5 nearly equal lobes, minutely glandular-hairy on the outside. Stamens are 4, filaments sparsely hairy, anthers curved, ending in a point. Sepals are 5, linear blunt, fused at the base for 1 mm, 4 long, 1 short. Longer one 7 mm long, shorter 6 mm long. Flowers are borne in laxly-flowered spikes at branch ends or in leaf axils, sometimes shortly and weakly branched. Bracts are obovate, 5 mm long, glandular hairy; brateoles linear, 3 mm. Stem and banches are bluntly quadrangular, grooved between the blunt edges, hairless on the older, young parts velvet-hairy. Leaves are stalked, up to 5 cm long, 2.5 cm wide, wedge-shaped at base, blunt at tip, obovate or inverted-lanceshaped in shape, hairless, marked with minute lines on both surfaces. Lower surface is covered with prominent yellow glandular spots when young. Leaf margins are rounded toothed when young, shallowly lobed in older. Stalk is up to 7 mm long, velvet-hairy. Capsules are 8-9 mm long, hairy at tip, splitting elastically from tip to base. Seeds are circular. Andaman Coneflower found In the moist deciduous forest of Andaman & Nicobar.

Identification credit: John Wood, J.M. Garg Photographed at Mount Harriet, Andaman & Nicobar.

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