• Family : LORANTHACEAE
  (Mistletoe Family)
• Family (Hindi name) : BANDA FAMILY
• Family (as per The APG System III) : SANTALACEAE
• Species Name (as per The Plant List) : Viscum cruciatum Sieber ex Boiss.
• Vernacular name : Malang (Oria); Banda (Hindi); Chandra badanica, Sundara badanica (Telugu); Itthikanni (Malayalam)
• Habit : Parasite
• Habitat : On trees including mangrove plants, moist deciduous and semi-Evergreen forests
• Comments / notes : Often on plains to 1500m.
• Key identification features : Woody branched undershrub
• Flower, Fruit : November-March
• Distribution :
  • Andhra Pradesh : Throughout Andhra Pradesh
  • Karnataka : Bengaluru district, Kodagu (Coorg) district, Mysuru district, Tumakuru district, Uttara Kannada district
  • Kerala : Wayanad district, Palakkad district, Thrissur district, Idukki district, Pathanamthitta district, Kollam district, Thiruvananthapuram district
  • Tamil Nadu : Throughout Tamil Nadu
• World Distribution : India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, Malay Peninsula, New Guinea, Australia
• Conservation Status : Least Concern (LC)
• Literature : Pullaiah et al., 2011 - Flora of Eastern Ghats Vol. 4; Matthew, K.M., The Flora of Tamil Nadu Carnatic, Vol.3 (2). Diocesan Press, Madras. 1983; Sasidharan, N. 2011. Flowering plants of Kerala. DVD, V 2, KFRI; Saldanha, 1996; Ramaswamy & Razi, 1973 - Bangalore; Keshava Murthy & Yoganarasimhan, 1990 - Coorg; Bhaskar & Kushalappa, 2013- Flora of Tumkur District.
• 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=Viscum orientale. Downloaded on 2 April 2025.

Botanical Description

Herbarium Specimen(s)

Field Image(s)