A very beautiful name to begin with. Manoranjitham is a plant, prevalent in India, actually, it I knew it cos it grew in my neighbour's frontyard. Its very popular in Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh. Its a plant thats strong enough to stand on it own but since it spreads wide, it clings on to supports with hook like outgrowths from its shoots. The curved hook is very tender and green in the beginning but once it has caught hold of a support, it tends to encircle and harden as wood around the support, which could be a cable or a slender shoot of another plant. The hooks look very elvish like it comes in LOTR.
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| the hook used for climbing and support |
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| the Elvish leaves |
And the main highlight is the flower. Manoranjitham has flowers, one each at a leaf node of a growing branch. Its not brightly coloured, rather it looks like leaves, in a pale green when fully bloomed and tends to yellow on as it gets older. And what it lacks in colour, it compensates double in fragrance. A highly intoxicating and sweet smell fills the air even when a plant has one flower in full bloom. The fragrance can be felt as far as 7 or 8 metres away. And it is a word of mouth and probable truth that this fragrance attracts snakes. The flower looks like two Mitsubishi logos placed one on top of the other, showing six pointy petals.
The flowers are popularly used as offerings to God and at weddings.
Each flower gives rise to a bunch of aggregate fruits which ripen to a bright yellow and start falling of the plant in an attempt to further germination and propagation.
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| the fruits |
And in some rare occurences, the flowers can come up as a bunch at one node, like this.
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| a rare occurence of multiple flowers at one node |
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