Madras Leaf Flower

Gebel Elba.

Southeast Egypt, Tropical Africa, Arabia, India, Sri Lanka, Java, China, Australia.

Phyllanthus maderaspatensis is known from the Flora area from a single 19th-century collection from Hong Kong. Elsewhere it is a very successful adventive in drier regions. The description is based largely on material from outside China.

Herbs, perennial but often flowering in first year, 0.15-0.9(-1.2) m tall, monoecious, glabrous throughout; stem usually woody at base; branching mostly basal, all similar, erect or ascending. Leaves spiral; stipules ovate, 1.5-2(-4) mm, petiole very short; leaf blade linear-lanceolate to obovate, (7-)10-30(-60) × (1-)2-7(-17) mm, leathery, gray-green, base rounded, apex shortly acuminate; lateral veins obscure. Inflorescences axillary fascicles, most axils with 1 female flower, distal axils with 1-4 male flowers. Male flowers: pedicels ca. 1 mm; sepals 6, suborbicular, ca. 1 × 0.8 mm, margins entire; disk glands 6, small and smooth; stamens 3; filaments connate at base; anthers longitudinally dehiscent. Female flowers: pedicels 1.5-2 mm; sepals 6, suborbicular to subspatulate, ca. 2 × 1.5 mm, margin entire; persistent in fruit; disk glands 6, ± square; ovary globose, 3-celled, smooth; styles 3, ± free. Fruit a capsule, oblate, 1.2-2 × ca. 3 mm, olive green, smooth. Seed 3-sided, ca. 1.3 mm, light brown, with rows of minute tubercles on back and sides.

Slopes with scrub, elsewhere often in disturbed areas. Hong Kong [India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka; Africa, SW Asia, Australia].

maderaspatensis: from the Madras region of India

Erect or decumbent annual or perennial herb, up to c. 1 m tall. Stems branched, angular, often reddish or brownish tinged. Leaves spirally arranged, up to 6 cm long on main shoots, usually much smaller on lateral branches, linear, lanceolate, oblong, oblanceolate or obovate, grey-green above, paler blue-green beneath, sometimes edged reddish; lateral veins 4-10 pairs, not prominent above, prominent beneath; petiole up to 2 mm long. Stipules 1-4 mm long asymmetrically triangular-lanceolate, cordate-auriculate on one side at the base, whitish to pinkish-cream with a brownish central line. Flowers in few-flowered clusters at almost all leaf axils; male flowers with sepals yellowish-green on pedicels up to 1 mm long; female flowers with sepals dull green, often pinkish-purple tinged, on pedicels c. 2 mm long. Fruit 2 × 3 mm, depressed rounded-3-lobed, smoth and somewhat shiny, olive-green, often reddish-tinged.

Common

Widespread in the Old World tropics and subtropics.

Phyllanthus maderaspatensis is a perennial herbaceous species of plant in the family Phyllanthaceae, widespread in tropical and subtropical areas of the old world.