Beaumontia grandiflora Wall.

Cultivated for its ornamental flowers, the young branches are used for making course ropes.

Cultivated as an ornamental. The young branches are used for making coarse ropes. The roots and leaves are used in the treat-ment of fractures, injury, and backache and leg pain caused by rheumatism.

A large evergreen climber. Stem woody with rusty pubescent shoot, milky juice flows from cut stems; leaves opposite, exstipulate, membranous-coriaceous, ovate to ovate-oblong, abruptly acuminate usually smooth and glabrous, rarely sparesely hairy below, 15-30 x 7-18 cm, petiole 1.25-2.5 cm long, hairy. Calyx segments oblanceolate, tomentose, c. 3.5 cm long, often glandular within, dark red or reddish brown in colour. Corolla 7.5 - 12.5 cm long, campanulate, white or creamish, glabrous or pubescent, lobes 5, c. 2.5 cm long rounded, acute with a short tube. Stamens 5, inserted on the corolla tube, alternating with the lobes; anthers sagittate, connivent to the stigma forming five sided cone, disc 5-lobed. Style filiform, stigma fusiform. Follicles oblong, thick, woody, turgid green. Seeds many ovoid or oblong, compressed, contracted at the top.

Lianas to 20 m. Bark corky; young branches rusty pubescent; branchlets dark brown, pubescent to glabrous. Petiole to 3 cm; leaf blade narrowly obovate or narrowly to broadly elliptic, 6-30 X 3.5-15 cm, sparsely to densely pubescent when young, glabrous when older; lateral veins 8-20 pairs. Cymes 12-25 cm, 3-19-flowered, sparsely to densely pubescent; peduncle 2.5-9 cm; bracts leafy, pale green. Pedicel 2.5-4.5 cm. Sepals pale green, 3-6 mm. Corolla white, creamy, or pale yellow, base pale green; tube funnelform, 6.5-13 cm, glabrous inside; limb ca. 10 cm in diam., attenuate at base, sparsely to densely pubescent outside, glabrous inside; lobes suborbicular to broadly ovate, 1.7-4 cm, apex acuminate. Stamens white; filaments 3.2-6 cm; anthers 1.5-1.7 cm, included; disc ringlike, apex sparsely puberulent. Ovary tomentose. Style 7-9 cm. Follicles usually narrowly ellipsoid, 22-31 X 5-6 cm. Seeds 1.5-2.5 cm, coma 4-7 cm. Fl. spring-summer. 2n = 24.

E. Himalaya (Nepal, Sikkim).

Distribution: Native to the Eastern Himalayas, cultivated in gardens of Pakistan.

SW Guangxi, S Yunnan; cultivated in Fujian, Guangdong [Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam]

150-1400 m

Fl. Per.: March - April.

Humid montane forests, valleys, riverbanks; 300-1500 m.

Echites grandiflora Roxburgh.