Canscora tetraptera - Four-Wing Canscora

Four-Wing Canscora is an annual, erect, hairless herb, up to 20 cm tall. Flowers are 5-20, in leaf-axils or at branch-ends lax. Bracts are linear or ovate, 6-8 mm long, leaf-like. Flower-stalks are slender, 7-12 mm long, thickened at the base of the sepal-cup. Sepal-cup is 8-12 mm long, prominently 4-winged; wing extending from base to tip of the sepal-cup along the keel, 0.5-1 mm wide, persistent. Flower tube is up to 1.2 cm long, slightly longer than the sepal-cup, membranous; petals unequal, round, pink, upper two broad, about 3-2.5 mm and lower two narrow, about 2.5-1.5 mm, lower petals fused at tip forming a slit in which a large stamen is lodged. Stamens 4, anisomorphic (1 large, 3 small). Stems are four-edged, winged, green, branched apically; branches slender. Leaves are simple, opposite, decussate, stalkless or nearly so, about 5 mm long, blades of foliar leaves ovate-lanceshaped, 1.2-3 x 1-1.5 cm, distinctly 3-nerved, tip pointed-tapering, base narrowed or wedge-shaped, hairless. Floral leaves are broadly ovate, 1-1.5 x 1-1.2 cm; minutely glandular-hairy on margins. Four-Wing Canscora is endemic to Maharashtra. Aurangabad, Nashik, Palghar and Pune.