Heterotis rotundifolia - Spanish Shawl

Spanish Shawl is an ornamental plant from Tropical Africa with beautiful pink flowers which look like Melastomes. Infact the plant belongs to the Melastome family. It is a prostrate, trailing herb with stems rooting at the nodes, up to 20 cm or more long. The stem can be hairy. Leaves are ovate to ovate-lanceolate or nearly circular, 1.5-7 cm long, 0.8-4 cm wide, 3-nerved, both surfaces sparsely to densely bristly. Leaf margins are somewhat toothed and ciliated, and the tip is acute. Leaf stalks are 0.5-2.5 cm long. Flowers stalks are densely covered with green, spreading, hair-like, linear-oblong appendages 2-4 mm long. Sepals are lancelike in fruit, 5-6.5 mm long, 1.5-2 mm wide at base, bristly at apex and externally. Flowers have 5 pink petals 2 cm long, 1.5 cm wide. Stamens are prominent, and of two types. Anthers of larger stamens are pink or lavender, 7-8 mm long, with their base prolonged 3-4 mm and modified basally into a deeply 2-lobed spur 1.5-2 mm long. Anthers of smaller stamens are yellow, 5.5-7 mm long, connective prolonged 0.5 mm or less with a 2-lobed spur usually 0.5 mm long.