Wall. ex G.Don
Description
Holarrhena pubescens is a widely distributed paleotropical shrub or small tree with one of the broadest ranges in this set, documented by over 3,000 GBIF records spanning the Indian subcontinent (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan), Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia), southern China and much of sub-Saharan Africa (Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo). It is a plant of dry deciduous forest, savanna woodland, scrub and ravine margins, generally below about 1,300 m. The cited Nepalese plants, from Chainpur in the east at 1,300 m and from Arkhet in Gorkha at 720 m, both flowering in May, mark the upper Himalayan foothill edge of its altitudinal range.
The plant is a deciduous shrub to small tree exuding milky latex when cut. The leaves are opposite, simple, broadly elliptic to ovate, shortly petiolate, softly pubescent beneath and entire-margined. The flowers appear with or before the new leaves in dense terminal corymbose cymes; each is salverform with five white, fragrant, contorted petals on a slender tube, collectively giving a showy, jasmine-like display. The fruit is a pair of long, slender, pendulous cylindrical follicles, often spotted, splitting to release numerous flat seeds bearing an apical tuft of silky hairs adapted for wind dispersal.
The species is medicinally important: its bark and seeds (the drug "Kurchi") yield steroidal alkaloids such as conessine, long used against amoebic dysentery. It is the type-related species of the small Old World genus Holarrhena within tribe Malouetieae of subfamily Apocynoideae. Despite extensive harvesting for traditional medicine, its wide range and habitat tolerance keep it secure.
Author: Wall. ex G.Don · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of China Vol. 16, Flora of Pakistan, GBIF, Endress & Bruyns: A revised classification of the Apocynaceae