Dwarf Heliotrope is a prostrate branched annual
herb. Branches are brown-woolly with dense prostrate hairs up to 1 mm
long. Leaves are stalked, greyish white with dense hairs; leaf-stalk up
to 15 mm long. Blade is 10-20 x 5-12 mm, ovate to obovate or elliptic,
wedge-shaped to oblique, entire-wavy, blunt, nerves impressed on upper
surface. Inflorescence are lateral and at branch-ends, 2-7 cm long.
Flowers are arranged in a single row. Calyx is deciduous, 2.5 mm
long, up to 5 mm in fruit, one fourth parted into blunt sepals, densely
hairy. Flower tube is 3-4 mm long, retroresely hairy on the outside,
hairless within, petals oblong, shallow, erect. Anthem about 1 mm long,
narrowed towards the tip, attached about 1.5 mm from the flower base.
Stigma is about 0.6 mm long, conical; stigmatic ring prominent. Ovary
is hairless. Fruit is spherical, enclosed in the persistent calyx.
Nutlets are about 2.5 mm long, ovoid in outline, hairless, back
rugulose and minutely tubercied. Dwarf Heliotrope is found in S.
Europe, N. Africa, Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, India. Flowering:
December-January.
Medicinal uses: The pulped plant is mixed with
water and applied to tumours.The pyrrolizidine alkaloids heliotrine and
lasiocarpine have been isolated, and extracts have been tested as a
control agent for Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, a chickpea disease, with
limited success.
Identification credit: Siddarth Machado
Photographed in Kadur Karnataka.
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The flower labeled Dwarf Heliotrope is ...