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Aeschynomene aspera
Also called Pith Plant
Sola pith plant is a light, aquatic or semi-aquatic annual to subshrub in the pea family, native to South and Southeast Asia and northern Australia. Its very light stem pith is carved into sola topis, and it grows well in shallow wet soil or water.
Aeschynomene aspera is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae. It is also known by the names sola (Odia: ସୋଲ), shola (Bengali: শোলা) sola pith plant, pith plant, laugauni (Hindi), Bendu-chettu (Telugu), ponguchedi (Malayalam) or Netti (Tamil). The low density wood of this plant is used to make hats known as pith helmets or sola topis.
It is native to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.
From the biological viewpoint, the used part is the wood of the stem; the plant's name presumably comes from the similarity of its spongy wood to the soft pith of harder woody plants.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Aeschynomene aspera by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
