Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Elephant Rope Tree

Sterculia villosa

Elephant Rope Tree
Photo: J.M.Garg, CC BY-SA 3.0
Family
Malvaceae (Mallow family)
Grows as
Tree
Native range
Indian Subcontinent to China (SW. Yunnan) and Indo-China
Climate
wet tropical

About

Sterculia villosa, the hairy sterculia, or elephant rope tree, known vernacularly as Sardol, Udal, or Udar in Northeast India, is a medium-sized, monoecious tree. A leaf from this plant is characterized by a petiole about 25–40 cm long and by a lamina composed of 5-7-lobes, approximately 20–40 cm long and wide. The leaves are glabrescent on the top but tomentose on the bottom. The elephant rope tree's panicles are about 15–30 cm long, rusty in color and pendulous. Its flowers are unisexual and have pedicels about 4–8 mm long and thread-like bracteoles; the flowers are easily detached and tend to be shed at an early stage. Its seeds are oblong, smooth, and black. It is distributed throughout India and Bangladesh, although it is cultivated elsewhere due to its fast-spreading nature.

Sterculia villosa possesses certain paper-making characteristics.

Other Sterculia plants

Large Leaved Star Chestnut · Cape star-chestnut · Panama tree · Sterculia balanghas · Sterculia cinerea · Sterculia cochinchinensis · Hazel sterculia · Spotted Sterculia · Sterculia hypochroa · Sterculia khasiana · Sterculia lanceifolia · Sterculia lanceolata

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Sterculia villosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…