尖叶蛇根草 jian ye she gen cao

Herbs, ascending, to 1 m tall; stems moderately villous or hispid. Leaves in subequal pairs; petiole 1.5-4(-7) cm, densely pilose or hispid; blade drying thinly papery, gray or olive-green, ovate or broadly ovate, 7-17 × 3.5-7 cm, sparsely hispid on both surfaces or moderately so abaxially, base obtuse, decurrent, often oblique, margins subentire, apex acuminate; secondary veins 9-14 pairs; stipules sublanceolate, markedly contracted above, pilose, ciliate, acuminate. Inflorescence congested-cymose, many flowered, villous; peduncle 1.5-2 cm; bracts linear, 3-4 mm, ciliate, persistent. Flowers distylous, subsessile. Calyx pilose; hypanthium subturbinate, ca. 1 mm, 5-ribbed; lobes subtriangular, ca. 0.5 mm, usually with 1 gland in each sinus. Corolla pale purple or white, slenderly tubular, sparsely pilose or hispid outside; tube 10-12 mm, inside with white villous ring near middle; lobes ovate-triangular, ca. 1 mm. Capsules ca. 2 × 5 mm, pilose or hispid.

Forests. SW Yunnan [NE India].

H. S. Lo (in FRPS 71(1): 134. 1999) noted that the corollas of the two floral forms are similar but that the flowers differ in the reciprocally placed anthers and stigmas positioned near the middle of the corolla tube or in the throat, respectively.

This species is circumscribed here following H. S. Lo (loc. cit.) and does not correspond to the circumscription of this species by Deb and Mondal (Bull. Bot. Surv. India 39(1-4): 59-61. 1997). Deb and Mondal described Ophiorrhiza hispida as having corollas with tubes 3-4 mm, leaves 2-15 × 1-4 cm, a plant stature of 35 cm or less, and calyx lobes 0.8-1 mm; the plants treated as O. hispida by Lo key to O. fasciculata in Deb and Mondal’s treatment.