Strobilanthes paniculiformis - Panicled Coneflower

Panicled Coneflower is a perennial herb with unequal paired leaves. Flowers are borne at branch-ends, in panicles of tight, stalked heads. Inflorescence branches are up to 11 cm long, mostly 3-forked at the branching points, grooved. Bracts are paired, leaf-like, variable in shape and size, 0.5-4.5 x 0.3-1.2 cm. Flower-heads are few-flowered, not elongating in fruit. Flowers are 3.6-4 cm long, velvet-hairy outside, hairless inside, the basak tube whitish, 1-1.5 mm wide, cylindrical for about 1.5 cm, then becoming bluish-purple, gradually bent at 45 degree and widened to about 1.2 cm at the mouth, equally 5-lobed. The lobes are 6-8 3-4 mm, broadly ovate, rounded. Stamens do not protrude out. Sepal-cup is about 5-lobed almost half to the base, outside sticky- glandular-hairy and eventually purplish, inside hairless, sepals linear-oblong, blunt, growing from 7 mm to 13 mm long in fruiting, one sepal 1-2 mm longer than others. Stems are probably rising up, at least 30 cm long, hairless. Leaves are stalked, somewhat unequal in each pair, the smaller one about two thirds the size of the larger one. Leaf-stalks are 0-1 cm long, blade 5-14.5 x 1-4.5 cm, narrowly oblong-elliptic, tapering at both ends and decurrent, margin sawtoothed, but becoming entire towards the base, hairless, paler beneath. Capsule is 15 x 1 mm oblong, glandular-hairy, 4 seeded. Panicled Coneflower is found in NE India to Myanmar, particularly Manipur, Nagaland, at altitudes of 100-1700 m.