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Kolhapur Ceropegia
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Kolhapur Ceropegia
P Native Photo: Aakash Raut
Common name: Kolhapur Ceropegia
Botanical name: Ceropegia shivrayana    Family: Apocynaceae (Oleander family)

Kolhapur Ceropegia is a recently (2024) discovered species of Ceropegia. It is named for the Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. It is a perennial twining herbs with tuberous, nearly-spherical rootstock, tubers 3-4.5 cm in diameter and fibrous roots. Flowers are 1.5-2.5 cm long, greyish-white, with a 1-1.3 cm tube, spherical and dark purple below, white above. Petals are 0.8-1.2 x 0.5-0.7 cm, reflexed and fused at the tips into an obovate cage 0.5-1 cm in diameter. Sepals are 2-3 mm long and linear. Corona is 5-5.5 x 4.5-5 mm, biseriate; inner lobes yellow with red spots. Pollinia about 0.8 x 1 mm, broadly ovoid and yellow. Flowers are borne in 3-8-flowered cymes with 4-5.5 cm long, brown, hairy flower-cluster-stalks. Bracts are 3-5 mm long, linear and pointed; flower-stalks 1.5-2 cm long and sparsely hairy. Stems are slender, branched, round, greenish and hairless, up to 2 m long, with 11-18 cm long internodes. Leaves are simple, stalked and hairless; leaf-stalks 1.5-2.5 cm long; blades 10-12.5 x 2.5-6 cm, smooth, discolourous, elliptic-lanceshaped with a heart-shaped base and pointed tip. Flowering: August–September.

Identification credit: Aakash Raut, Akshay Prakash Jangam Photographed at Vishalgad fort, Kolhapur District, Maharashtra.

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