Lepidagathis prostrata - Prostrate Pink Scaly-Ball

Prostrate Pink Scaly-Ball is a prostrate perennial shrub with stem rigid, creeping, bluntly four-edged, flexuous, whitish, young softly woolly. Leaves are ovate-elliptic, lanceshaped, 1-2.5 x 0.3-0.6 cm, stalkless, spine-tipped, velvet-hairy to hairless on both sides. Spikes are simple, erect, at branch-ends on short lateral branches, glandular-velvet-hairy, 2-9 cm. Flowers are rose, 1.4-1.9 cm, 2-lipped, velvet-hairy outside, upper lip deeply notched, rounded, broad, with dark transverse striations inside, lower lip deeply 3 lobed, lobes oblong, equal, distant, palate hairless. Stamens are 4, didynamous, anthers bearded. Sepal-cup is 5-partite, sepals spine-tipped, glandular-velvet-hairy, posterior sepal 12-13 x 3-4.5 mm, twice as broad as anterior sepals, ovate-lanceshaped, 5-nerved, anterior sepals 1-1.2 x 2-2.5 mm, lanceshaped, 3-nerved, lateral sepals linear, 9-10 x 1-1.5 mm. Bracts are oblong obovate, 12-13 x 4-6 mm, spin-tipped. Bracteoles are linear-lanceshaped, 8-9 x 1-2 mm, spine-tipped. Capsules ovoid, 8-10 mm, 1-2-seeded. Seeds ovoid, 3-4 x 2-3 mm, with short hygroscopic hairs. Prostrate Pink Scaly-Ball is an endemic species in south Konkan and often along the Ghats in South Canara, so far collected only from a few localities in Goa, Karnataka, and Maharashtra states of peninsular. Flowering: November-April.