Description

Fire Flame Bush is a large shrub growing up to 5 metres tall with long, spreading branches. A valuable multipurpose plant, it has been exploited commercially as a source of tannins and dyes. It is also an excellent pioneer species, is used medicinally and has minor food uses. The flowers are traded in local markets for use in traditional medicines and the plant is also often cultivated in gardens. The plant is classified as 'Least Concern' in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Characteristics:

Fire Flame Bush is a spreading, deciduous shrub, small in size but very conspicuous on dry, rocky hillsides. It is up to 3 m tall with spreading stems. Leaves nearly stalkless, 4-11 x 2-4 cm, ovate-lanceshaped or lanceshaped, subleathery, whitish velvety woolly and finely orangish- or black-dotted beneath. Flowers are crimson, slightly zygomorphic, in 2-16-flowered in leaf-axils cymes; flower-stalks to 1 cm long. Calyx tube 1-1.5 cm long, tubular; sepals 6, short, more or less triangular, alternating with small callous appendages. Petals are 6, red, 3-4 mm long, lanceshaped-tapering. Stamens are 12, inserted near the bottom of the calyx tube, 0.5-1.5 cm long, prominently protruding out. Ovary is 4-6 mm long, oblong, 2-celled; ovules many; style 0.7-1.5 cm long. Capsules are 0.6-1 x 0.25-0.4 cm, ellipsoid, included in the calyx. Seeds numerous, trigonous-ovoid. Fire Flame Bush is found in Sri Lanka, South Konkan and on the Ghats and ascends the Himalayas up to 200-1800 m, but is rarer in South India.

Medicinal uses:

This is a drug largely used in native medicine. This enters into the composition of many preparations, decoctions, churnas and ghritas for various diseases, but chiefly dysentery and diarrhoea by reason of its being highly astringent. The flowers are astringent. They are used in the treatment of dysentery, traditionally being beaten up with honey into a kind of confection