Aeschynanthus acuminatus - Tapering-Leaf Blushwort

Tapering-Leaf Blushwort is a climber with stems 25-150 cm long, hairless. Flowers are red, rarely greenish, 1.5-2.2 cm, outside hairless, inside finely velvet-hairy at base of lower lip, without clusters of hairs, mouth strongly oblique; limb distinctly 2-lipped; upper lip erect, about 4.5 mm; lower lip reflexed, about 5 mm. Stamens are protruding; filaments 1.2-2.2 cm; anthers coherent in pairs at tip, 1.5-2 mm; staminode 1.2-2 mm. Pistil 1.6-2 cm. Style is about 4 mm, hairless. Sepal-cup is red, 5-sect from base; sepals ovate to ovate-oblong or obovate, 2.5-5 x 2-3 mm, outside hairless. Flower-stalks are 7-12 mm, hairless. Flowers are borne in cymes in leaf-axils or at branch-ends, 1-3-flowered; flower-cluster-stalk 0.8-3 cm; bracts persistent, reddish, nearly round, 3-9 x 4-10 mm. Leaves are opposite; leaf-stalk 2-11 mm; leaf blade lanceshaped to elliptic or narrowly inverted-lanceshaped, rarely oblong, 4.5-12 x 1.4-3 cm, thin papery to leathery, hairless, base wedge-shaped to margin entire to shallowly crenulate, tip tapering; lateral veins indistinct. Capsule 6.5-16 cm. Seeds with 1 hairlike appendage at each end, appendages 1.5-4 mm. Tapering-Leaf Blushwort is found goriwng on trees, streamside rocks in forested valleys, at altitudes of 200-1900 m, in the Himalayas to China and SE Asia. Flowering: October-March.