DC.
Description
Grewia serrulata is a shrub or small tree of the Indomalayan tropics, distributed through India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bhutan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Thailand, with around 382 GBIF occurrences. It is a plant of warm subtropical to tropical hill forest, growing in open woodland, forest margins, scrub, ravine slopes and along roadsides and clearings, generally on well-drained ground in the foothill and lower montane belt. The record from Wangdi Phodrang in Bhutan at about 2000 m in May illustrates its occurrence in the warm temperate to subtropical zone of the eastern Himalayan foothills, flowering in the pre-monsoon season.
The plant is a much-branched shrub or small tree with young branchlets bearing stellate pubescence. The alternate, simple leaves are ovate to oblong-lanceolate with an asymmetric, rounded to subcordate base, an acuminate apex, a finely serrulate margin (as the epithet denotes) and prominent palmate basal venation, the lower surface often paler and stellate-hairy. The flowers are borne in small axillary or leaf-opposed cymes; each has five sepals, five spreading yellow to whitish petals each with a basal nectariferous gland, and a prominent central androgynophore bearing numerous stamens around a superior ovary. The fruit is a small, lobed, fleshy drupe, becoming reddish to purplish-black at maturity and bearing few stones.
Described by de Candolle, Grewia serrulata belongs to a large genus formerly placed in Tiliaceae but now subsumed, following molecular phylogenetics, within the broadly circumscribed Malvaceae (subfamily Grewioideae); the input family is retained accordingly. The genus is well known for its tough bast fibres and edible drupes, and several species are gathered for fruit, fodder and fibre. As a widespread, adaptable component of secondary and disturbed forest, G. serrulata is not regarded as threatened, though locally valued for its useful products.
Author: DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of British India, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Bayer & Kubitzki treatment of Malvaceae