Firmiana colorata (Roxb.) R. Br.

An ornamental plant with scarlet or deep orange flowers looking like a mass of coral on the bare branches. Hindus and Ceylonese regard it as a sacred plant. Branches yield fibre of inferior quality and branches with young leaves are used in India as fodder.

The place of publication of Firmiana colorata is often given as R. Brown in Bennett, Pl. Jav. Rar. 235. 1844, which was published in November 1844 and was thus predated by Brown’s preprint published in June of the same year.

A tree with ash coloured bark. Leaves with 7-25 cm long petiole, crowded towards the end of branches; lamina usually palmately 3-5-lobed, cordate, 10-20 cm long, 12-25 cm broad; stipules lanceolate. Panicle short, terminal. Flowers covered with red or orange-red coral-like pubescence, appearing before the leaves; pedicel 5-7 mm long. Calyx broadly tubular or funnel-shaped, hairy at the base within, 2-3 cm long with 2-3 mm long triangular lobes. Staminal column red, with 10-30 sessile, yellow anthers. Styles short, recurved. Follicles lanceolate-elliptic to oblong, 4-7 cm long, straw coloured, reticulate, 2-seeded. Seeds yellow, wrinkled or smooth, ovoid, c. 1 cm long.

Deciduous trees, up to 15 m tall. Branchlets gray-black when desiccate, minutely gray puberulent. Petiole 10-15 cm; leaf blade broadly cordate, 17.5-25 × 18-20 cm, thinly leathery, both surfaces sparsely yellowish stellate puberulent, basal veins 5-7, veinlets prominently raised on both surfaces, nearly parallel, base deeply cordate, apex 3-5-lobed, middle lobe ca. 5 cm, apex obtuse, lateral lobes ca. 3 cm. Inflorescence cymose-paniculate, up to 7 cm, densely orange-red stellate puberulent. Pedicels 4-5 mm, puberulent. Calyx funnel-shaped, base nearly cuneate, ca. 20 × 7-8 mm, apex 5-lobed, abaxially densely stellate puberulent with orange hairs, adaxially densely puberulent, lobes ovate-triangular, ca. 4 mm, apex acute. Male flower: androgynophore 10-12 mm, stellate puberulent. Female flower: ovary 5-locular, nearly separated, glabrous. Style short; stigma curved outward. Follicle stalked, red or purple when mature, foliaceous, tongue-shaped, 5-7 cm, 2-4-seeded, with apparent venation. Seeds black, globose, ca. 6 mm in diam. Fl. Mar-Apr.

Nepal, India, Ceylon, Burma, Andaman Isl., Thailand, Indo-China, Hainan.

Distribution: A native of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), south west India eastwards to Burma, Bangla Desh, cultivated in our area.

S Yunnan [Bhutan, India (including
Andaman Islands), Indonesia (Sumatra), Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam].

250 m

Fl.Per.: March-May.

Forested slopes; 700-1000 m.

Sterculia colorata Roxburgh, Pl. Coromandel 1: 26. 1795; Erythropsis colorata (Roxburgh) Burkill; E. roxburghiana Schott & Endlicher, nom. illeg. superfl.; Karaka colorata (Roxburgh) Rafinesque.