Hermannia flammea Jacq.

Suffrutex up to about 65 cm tall, sometimes taller, erect or diffuse, with slender, usually suberect branchlets, branchlets sparsely to densely pubescent with minute, fringed scales or coarse, stellate hairs, pubescence usually densest on pedicels. Stipules usually linear-oblong to oblong, mucronate; sometimes obovate, usually erect but sometimes falcate, 4-11 mm long, 1-2 mm broad, stellate, glabrescent. Leaves usually fascicled, subsessile or very shortly petiolate; blade broadest at or near apex, cuneate, from 5-25 mm long, 3-10 mm broad, lowermost sometimes larger, apex rounded or subtruncate with a small, slightly recurved mucro and usually 2-to 6-toothed, stellate-hairy becoming glabrous, sometimes stellate hairs persistent but then leaves broad, sometimes persistent on margins only, leaves often rough with scaly bases of the stellate hairs; petiole up to 2 mm long. Inflorescence of 1-to 2-flowered cymes arranged in fairly lax, terminal, racemose cymes or clustered at apex of branchlets; peduncles 2-4 mm long; bracts subulate, linear or obovate, about 3 mm long; pedicels 2-3 mm long. Calyx lobed to about middle; lobes oblong-deltoid, base broad, very shortly and broadly acuminate to apex which is often incurved at first and then at least some spreading, rough with fairly laxly stellate hairs or with minute scales fringed with short hairs. Petals red or yellow, “yellow red-brown”, “orange-red”, “yellow inside, maroon outside”, strongly twisted in upper half, 8-9 mm long, about 5 mm broad at broadly rounded apex, narrowing about midway into a rather broad claw with infolded margins, densely stellate-pubescent along the edges of lower half. Filaments hyaline, linear-oblong, somewhat cuneate, about 3 mm long; anthers about 2 mm long, ciliate, shortly overlapping filaments at base. Ovary about 6 mm long, stellate-pubescent. Capsule long exserted from persistent calyx, about 8 mm long, 5 mm broad, densely stellate-pubescent, 5-umbonate at the apex, umbos stellate.