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Lanceleaf Wax Flower
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Lanceleaf Wax Flower
P Native Photo: M. Sawmliana
Common name: Lanceleaf Wax Flower • Mizo: Hnah-chhah • Nepali: कुरकुरे झार Kurkure jhar
Botanical name: Hoya lanceolata    Family: Apocynaceae (Oleander family)

Lanceleaf Wax Flower is a stout-stemmed, tree-dwelling shrub with long drooping branches. Young stems, leaf-stalks and inflorescence branches are densely velvet-hairy. Leaves are elongate-rhomboid to ovate lanceshaped, 1.5-6 x 0.6-1.5cm tip pointed to tapering, base wedge-shaped, 1.5-2 mm thick, fleshy and leathery, hairless dark green above paler below; leaf-stalk 1-5mm. Flowers are borne in 6-10 flowered umbels, at branch-ends or in leaf-axils. Flowers are hairless outside, minutely velvet-hairy inside, tube about 3 mm long; petals triangular, about 3 x 5 mm. Staminal coronal scales are shorter and more rounded elliptic, about 2.5 x 2 mm, white or crimson. Pods are long and very slender, 8-15 x 0.3 cm, surface thin, hairless and finely striped. Lanceleaf Wax Flower is found in the Himalayas, from Kumaun to NE India, N. Burma, at altitudes of 1000-2000 m. Flowering: May-June.

Identification credit: M. Sawmliana Photographed in Reiek tlang, Mizoram.

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