FoI
Yellow Thottea
Share Foto info
Yellow Thottea
P Native Photo: Sam Kuzhalanattu
Common name: Yellow Thottea • Malayalam: Kodassari
Botanical name: Thottea duchartrei    Family: Aristolochiaceae (Birthwort family)

Yellow Thottea is a herb or undershrub with branches floppy, minutely velvet-hairy on the younger parts, nodes swollen. It is named for the French botany professor, Pierre Duchartre. Leaves are alternate, oblong-lanceshaped, tapering, entire, shining green above, greyish velvet-hairy or rufous below, 3-nerved from base, laterals exceeding the middle of the blade; leaf-stalk 5-8 mm long. Flowers are borne 1-2 in leaf-axils; flower-cluster-stalks short, bracteate; buds 8 mm across, depressed spherical or button like, softly velvet-hairy all over, yellowish or purple tinted. Tepals are 3, as long as the flower-tube, round-pointed, broader than long, 5 x 8 mm. Gynostemium is 4-5 mm across, minutely glandular hairy. Stamens are 9, united in 3 bundles in a ring around the stylar column. Capsules are 6-10 cm long, green, becoming hairless. Yellow Thottea is endemic to Southern Western Ghats.

Identification credit: E S Santhosh Kumar, S. Kasim Photographed in Kerala.

• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,