• Family : FABACEAE
  (Pea Or Bean Family)
• Family (Hindi name) : PALASH FAMILY (पलाश फैमिली)
• Family (as per The APG System III) : LEGUMINOSAE
• Subfamily : Faboideae
• Synonym(s) : Butea purpurea (Benth ex Baker) Blatt.
• Species Name (as per The Plant List) : Spatholobus purpureus Prain
• Vernacular name : Vallichamatha (Malayalam)
• Habit : Liana
• Habitat : Evergreen and semi-Evergreen forests
• Comments / notes : Not common.
• Key identification features : Large climber; pods papery winged
• Flower, Fruit : December-May
• Collection Nos : R.S.Raghavan 69406 (BSI), Talbot 1630 (BSI)
• Distribution :
  • Karnataka : Dakshina Kannada district, Shivamogga district, Uttara Kannada district
  • Kerala : Kannur district, Wayanad district, Kozhikode district, Palakkad district, Thrissur district, Idukki district, Pathanamthitta district, Kollam district, Thiruvananthapuram district
  • Tamil Nadu : Coimbatore district
• Endemism : Western Ghats
• World Distribution : India
• Conservation Status : Not Evaluated (NE)
• Literature : Flora of Karnataka, Saldanha, 1984; Sasidharan, N. 2011. Flowering plants of Kerala. DVD, V 2, KFRI; Henry, Kumari & Chithra (1983). Flora of Tamil Nadu, India vol. 1.
• Citation : Sankara Rao, K., Raja K Swamy, Deepak Kumar, Arun Singh R. and K. Gopalakrishna Bhat (2019). Flora of Peninsular India. http://peninsula.ces.iisc.ac.in/plants.php?name=Spatholobus purpureus. Downloaded on 21 November 2024.

Botanical Description

Field Image(s)