Biophytum sensitivum

Biophytum sensitivum (L.) DC.                              

Family            :  Oxalidaceae 

Common Name : മുക്കുറ്റി(Mal)

                                  Little tree plant (Eng)

    लजालू  (Hin)                           

Tropical Little Tree Plant is an annual herb, base woody. Flowers are borne in several flowered umbels carried on flower-cluster-stalks 2-7 cm, nearly equal to leaf length. Petals are yellow, longer than sepals. Sepals are 5-6 mm, with glandular septate trichomes. Flower-stalks are about 1 mm at anthesis but up to 3 mm in fruit. Bracts are several, lanceshaped, about 2 mm, densely crowded at tip of flower-cluster-stalk, cluster about 3 mm. Stem is simple, slender to robust, bristly especially apically. Leaves are 3-13 cm; axis slender, moderately bristly; leaflets 6-14 pairs; leaflet blades oblong to obovate-oblong, 3-15 x 2-7 mm, usually hairless, occasionally sparsely covered with trichomes, base almost symmetric. Leaves are sensitive to touch, and fold up on being disturbed.  ca 3 mm long.

Annual herbs, to 15 cm high, downy-pubescent. Leaves 1.5-8 cm long; petioles to 2 cm long; leaflets 7-15 pairs; terminal pair the largest, obovate, curved, ca 12 x 7 mm; upper ones oblong, ca 10 x 6 mm; basal ones ovate, obtuse at base, short-apiculate at apex, ca 7 x 4 mm; apical bristles to 1.5 mm long. Umbels 5-10, 7-10 flowered; peduncles 3-7 cm long, appressed-strigose and glandular hairy; bracts ovate, setaceous; pedicels 2 mm or longer. Flowers 6-8 mm across, yellow with brick red tinge or red lines inside corolla. Sepals 5, lanceolate, to 5 mm long, glandular-pubescent, 5-nerved. Petals 5, oblong to 8 mm long. Stamens 10, short ones to 1 mm long, long ones to 3 mm long; staminal tube to 1.5 mm long; filaments sparsely puberulous. Ovary to 1.5 mm long; style to 1.8 mm long, 2-fid, puberulous at base. Capsules glandular-pubescent along septa; seeds 2(-4) in each locule, concentrically 9-ridged.