Friesodielsia sahyadrica - Sahyadri Dwaba-Berry

Sahyadri Dwaba-Berry is a newly discovered and interesting species. It is a climbing shrub, often erect and spreading in absence of the host tree. Branches are slender, round, occasionally twining around the host plant, young parts brown-bristly, older hairless and warty. Leaves are simple, alternate, distichous, oblong-lanceshaped, (abruptly) tapering, broadest above the middle, base narrowed, slightly rounded, 12-20 × 3-6 cm; midrib impressed above; leaf-stalk 0.8 cm, channelled; secondary nerves 10-13 pairs, looping; margin entire; upper surface hairless, shining, lower glaucous white. Flowers are borne in leaf-axils or extra-in leaf-axils, singly. Flower-stalk is stout, 0.4-0.5 cm long, rusty, finely velvet-hairy, with a minute ovate bract near the middle, bract about 0.2 × 0.1 cm. Sepals are three, green, valvate, 0.4-0.5 × 0.3-0.4 cm, finely velvet-hairy outside, broadly ovate, lanceshaped, fused at the base; petals six, in two whorls, yellow, valvate; outer whorl 0.8-1.0 × 0.5- 0.7 cm, ovate-lanceshaped, spreading, concave in the lower half, hairless within, sparsely hairy on the outside; inner similar in shape, 0.6-0.8 × 0.4-0.5 cm, connivent along margins and vaulted over stamens and ovaries, opening only basally by narrow slits. Stamens are numerous (about 35), 0.10-0.15 × 0.07-0.09 cm. Ovaries are oblong, densely strigose 0.10-0.11 × 0.08-0.09 cm; stigma hairless, club-shaped. Monocarps are oblong, cylindric, stalkless, up to five seeded, tapering at both ends, slightly constricted between seeds, hairless, 2.0-3.0 × 0.4-0.5 cm, scarlet when mature; seeds cylindrical, 0.6-0.7 × 0.4-0.5 cm. Sahyadri Dwaba-Berry is known only from its type locality in Sahyadri Hills.