海南凤仙花 hai nan feng xian hua

Plants annual, robust, 75-125 cm tall, glabrous. Stem succulent, simple or divaricately branched from middle, lower nodes swollen, naked. Leaves alternate, usually crowded at apices of stem and branches, internodes 5-15 mm; petiole 2.5-5 cm; leaf blade greenish abaxially, dark green adaxially, ovate-elliptic or ovate, 5-8 × 2.5-4 cm, thinly papery, with 2 ovoid-orbicular sessile basal glands, glabrous, midvein conspicuously raised, lateral veins 7-9 pairs, base broadly cuneate or subrounded, margin crenate-serrate, teeth curved-mucronulate, apex acute or acuminate. Inflorescences axillary, very short or subsessile, 1-flowered, occasionally 2-flowered. Pedicels slender, elongate in fruit, bracteate at base; bracts caducous, triangular-ovate or linear-lanceolate, minute. Flowers yellow or yellowish, 2.5-3 cm deep. Lateral sepals 2, yellowish green, sparsely purple spotted, suborbicular or broadly ovate-orbicular, 1.1-1.2 × 1.1-1.2 cm, membranous, ca. 12-veined, margin entire, apex mucronulate. Lower sepal shallowly saccate, 1.5-2 cm deep, abruptly constricted into a recurved, 2-lobed spur 5-6 mm; mouth oblique, ca. 1.5 cm wide, tip acute. Upper petal slightly cucullate, obovate-elliptic, 1.5-1.6 cm × ca. 8 mm, apex emarginate, cuspidate, abaxial midvein thickened, conspicuously cristate, crista subrounded; lateral united petals shortly clawed, 2-2.2 cm, 2-lobed; basal lobes suborbicular; distal lobes longer, broadly dolabriform, 1-1.2 × ca. 1 cm, apex undulate; auricles connate. Filaments linear, 5-6 mm, apex enlarged; anthers ovoid, apex obtuse. Ovary erect, fusiform, ca. 5 mm. Capsule clavate, 2-2.2 cm. Seeds 4 or 5, brown, oblong, ca. 3 mm, tuberculate. Fl. Jun-Jul.

● Dense forest understories, crevices and ledges of limestone cliffs; 1200-1300 m. Hainan.