Asian Bushbeech

Differs from other species in its climbing habit, branch spines, small leaves, and long narrow corollas.

Shrubs, climbing, 1-3(-10) m tall, usually with spines and minute yellowish brown hairs on young shoots. Petiole 0.5-4.5 cm; leaf blade ovate to obovate, 3-5(-9) X 2.2-3 (-8.5) cm, papery, abaxially dark brown villous and glandular, adaxially glabrescent, base cuneate, margin entire or ca. 3-5-lobed, apex acuminate, veins 3 or 4 pairs. Inflorescences terminal, usually pendulous, few to many flowered; primary floral branches very short, 1-5-flowered; bracts leaflike, small to large. Flowers pendulous. Calyx 3-6 2.5-4 mm, outside densely dark brown pubescent and with 2 to several disc-shaped glands, inside glabrous. Corolla yellow, 2-5 cm, 2-lipped and 4-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, upper lip entire, outside with scattered appressed hairs, inside with dense glandular hairs. Filaments with dense glandular hairs. Ovary 4-locular, glabrous. Style slender, hardly exserted, apically curved; stigma unequally 2-cleft. Drupes yellow, ovoid to obovoid, glabrous.

Guangdong, S Guangxi [Bangla-desh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam]

Mixed forests; 400-800 m.

Gmelina asiatica is a plant species, described by Linnaeus, in the family Lamiaceae (but previously placed on the Verbenaceae). No subspecies are listed in the Catalogue of Life.