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Pouch Birthwort
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Pouch Birthwort
P Native Photo: Amber Srivastava
Common name: Pouch Birthwort • Mizo: Sanghar-vaibel
Botanical name: Aristolochia saccata    Family: Aristolochiaceae (Birthwort family)
Synonyms: Aristolochia cathcartii, Siphisia angustifolia, Siphisia saccata

Pouch Birthwort is a climbing climbing with stems striped, brown-woolly. Flowers are borne in 3-5-flowered, 3-4 cm, racemes on old woody stems. Flower-stalk are 2-4 cm, drooping, brown hairy; bractlets subulate, about 10 × 2-3 mm. Calyx is yellow-green with purple veins and blotches, limb dark purple; tube geniculately curved, below hairy; basal portion of tube pouch-like, about 30 × 10 mm, orifice nearly quadrate; limb obliquely trumpet-shaped, about 3 cm in diameter, 3-lobed; lobes unequal, upper 2 distinctly recurved, deltoid, lower one broadly deltoid. Anthers are oblong, 3-4 mm. Gynostemium 3-lobed. Leaf-stalks are 8-10 cm, woolly to becoming hairless; leaf blade ovate, rounded-heart-shaped, or ovate-lanceshaped, 20-35 x 15-30 cm, leathery, below densely white woolly, above glabrate, veins palmate, 5-6 pairs from base, base heart-shaped, sinus 1-4 cm deep, tip pointed. Capsules are ovoid, about 5 cm x 3-4 cm, splitting basipetally. Pouch Birthwort is found in dense forests in valleys in China, Bhutan, NE India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sikkim. Flowering: May-June.
Medicinal uses: Pouch Birthwort is used medicinally in Tibet.

Identification credit: Amber Srivastava Photographed at Botanical Survey of India, Shillong.

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