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Chinese: zhu ying hua
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English: blood red tassel flower, powder-puff tree, red powder puff
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French: pompon
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Spanish: bellota |
Habit: shrub/tree
Description: "Shrubs or small trees, deciduous, 1-3 m tall. Branchlets brown, cylindric, rough. Stipules persistent, ovate-lanceolate; petiole 1-2.5 cm; pinnae 1 pair, 8-13 cm; petiolules ca. 1 mm; leaflets 7-9 pairs, obliquely lanceolate, 2-4 cm x 7-15 mm, sparsely pilose along margin, midvein close to upper margin, base oblique, apex obtuse, mucronate. Heads axillary, ca. 3 cm in diameter (including filaments); peduncles 1-3.5 cm. Calyx campanulate, ca. 2 mm. Corolla purplish; tube 3.5-5 mm, 5-lobed; lobes reflexed, ca. 3 mm, glabrous. Stamens numerous, scarlet, very brilliant; staminal tube white, ca. 6 cm, mouth inside with a subulate appendix; filaments deep red, ca. 2 cm. Legume dull brown, linear-oblanceolate, 6-11 cm x 5-13 mm, valves elastically open from apex to base along sutures when ripe, reflexed. Seeds 5 or 6, brown, oblong, 7-10 x ca. 4 mm" (Flora of China online).
Habitat/ecology: "Fertile, moist, but well-drained soils in sunny places are preferred" (Whistler, 2000; p. 100).
Propagation: Seed
Native range: Bolivia, but widely cultivated (GRIN).
