About Climbing Flax
Hugonia mystax is a species of plant in the family Linaceae found mainly in the dry forests of peninsular India and Sri Lanka. It is a scandent shrub, sometimes growing liana-like over other trees and bears yellow flowers and orange to red fruits in the rainy season. The branchlets are leafless at the base and instead have a pair of recurved spines which bear a resemblance to a moustache, giving rise to the epithet mystax, Latin for moustache. The Tamil name, mothira-kanni, refers to the resemblance to a ring. The roots of the plant are astringent and bittersweet, and are used to treat fevers, verminosis, and inflammations.
Description adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Plant Details
- Scientific name
- Hugonia mystax
- Genus
- Hugonia
- Family
- LINACEAE
- Habit
- Climbing shrub
- Habitat
- Dry and moist deciduous forests, also scrub jungles of the plains
- Native to
- South India, Sri Lanka
- Distribution
- India, Sri Lanka
- Flowering & fruiting
- May-October
- Conservation status
- Not Evaluated (NE)
Local Names
- Tamil
- Mothirakanni, Agori, Agure
- Kannada
- balle, Kaaka Beera, Modira Kanni Gida
- Malayalam
- Modirakkanni, Kaarthottii, കാർക്കോട്ടി
- Marathi
- कंसमारी Kansmari
Linaceae
Flax Family
Climbing Flax belongs to the Linaceae family.
The illustration represents the family — not necessarily this exact species.
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