(Grierson & D.G.Long) Panigrahi
Description
Entada rheedii subsp. sinohimalensis is a Sino-Himalayan liana of warm lower-montane forest, treated by GBIF as a synonym of the accepted Entada rheedii sinohimalensis (under E. rheedii Spreng.). It is a localised eastern Himalayan taxon ranging from Nepal and Sikkim into Bhutan and adjacent China and Myanmar; GBIF holds a single Bangladesh record, underscoring how sparsely this giant climber is documented. It grows in broadleaved subtropical forest and ravine vegetation at low elevations, as in the Mewa Khola of eastern Nepal at 1130 m in April, where it scrambles high into the canopy along humid river valleys.
It is a massive woody liana with stout, twining stems and tendrillate, bipinnate leaves whose pinnae bear several pairs of asymmetric oblong leaflets, the terminal pair of pinnae often modified into a coiling tendril. The flowers are small, sessile and crowded in slender elongate spikes, creamy white to greenish-yellow, with a five-toothed calyx, five free petals and ten exserted stamens giving the inflorescence a feathery aspect. The fruit is among the largest of any legume – a huge, woody, flattened pod up to a metre long that breaks transversely into one-seeded segments, each enclosing a large, hard, glossy brown "sea bean" capable of long-distance hydrochory.
Within the mimosoid clade of Fabaceae, Entada is a pantropical genus of lianas, and subsp. sinohimalensis represents the inland Himalayan-Chinese expression of the widespread E. rheedii. The buoyant, durable seeds are dispersed by water and ocean currents and are used as charms and in folk medicine. The taxon is rarely collected and its conservation status remains unassessed.
Author: (Grierson & D.G.Long) Panigrahi · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Brenan monograph of Entada