Coneflower photographed in wild after 73 years in Manipur

Our Correspondent
Imphal, April 22 (EMN): A flower species of genus Strobilanthes, which is commonly known as Coneflower, has been spotted and photographed in the wild after 73 years in Manipur.

The flower species was photographed by a team of well known website www.flowersofindia.net at Leimaram waterfall also widely known as Sadu Chiru waterfall in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district in the second week of April 2021.

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Initially, the flower could not be identified. So Tabish, the creator of the website www.flowersofindia.net, sent the pictures of the flower to a world expert on Strobilanthes, John RI Wood at the University of Oxford.

Later, John Wood identified the flower as Strobilanthes recurva CB Clarke, a rare species found in Northeast India and Bangladesh, notably in Manipur and Nagaland, says Tabish when contacted on the phone.

“This plant was last collected in 1948 from Manipur by F Kingdon-Ward, who was also the discoverer of the famed Shirui Lily,” he said adding “So, it seems that this plant has been found and identified after a gap of more than 70 years.”

“No picture of this plant existed till now, except for four dried herbarium specimens and a line drawing,” he added.

Now the flower, with new images is now listed at their website http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Manipur%20Coneflower.html.

According to the website, Manipur Coneflower is a rare, softly velvet-hairy under shrub about 1.5 feet tall. Leaves are ovate, pointed, rounded toothed, the lower ones longer stalked. Flowers are purple, tubular-trumpet-shaped with 1.25 inch long and nearly straight. They are borne in loose cylindrical spikes with 5 cm long, 1.2 cm wide, while the tips of the bracts visibly re-curved. The flowers bloom in April-May.

In the first week of March this year, a trekking team photographed a rare small flowering shrub identified as East-Himalayan Eranthemum (Eranthemum strictum) for the first time at Barak waterfall, a well known tourist destination in Manipur’s Tamenglong district bordering Assam and Nagaland. The shrub is also known as Neel Vasooka in Bengali.