| Latin Name | Observation Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Phyla nodiflora | May 13, 2026 | Purulia, Natore, Bangladesh |
On the afternoon of May 13th, I was walking along the road a little away from my house, saw it on the side of the road and immediately took some pictures. Later, when I got home and uploaded the pictures to the iNaturalist app, I learned a lot of wonderful information about this strange and beautiful wild grass flower, which I am sharing with you today.
Name and Family: According to the iNaturalist app, this beautiful flower has a strange English name, it is called ** tangle frogfruit'** or toothed frogfruit. Its scientific name is Phyla nodiflora. It is basically a perennial creeping or groundcover plant of the Verbenaceae family. In our country, it is commonly known as wild grass flower, ground okra or matmti grass.
Native and Habitat: I found that this plant is originally native to South America and the United States. However, over time, it has spread to tropical and temperate regions of the world. They are found in large numbers in the climate of our Bangladesh, India and neighboring countries. They usually prefer to live in damp soil, ponds, riverbanks and open grassy fields. They grow like a carpet right next to the ground.
Food and Reproduction: Being plants, they mainly make their food through photosynthesis from the nutrients of damp soil and direct sunlight. Their reproduction process is quite remarkable. They spread quickly around through creeping or creeping stems. Whenever the nodes of the stems touch wet soil, new roots grow from there and new plants are born. Apart from that, they also reproduce through the tiny seeds that are produced from their clusters of round flowers like the head of a matchstick.
This small wild grass flower does a great job of enhancing the beauty of the environment and preventing soil erosion, but it often becomes a very annoying weed for crop fields.
Benefits: They are very effective in preventing soil erosion. In addition, their small flowers attract butterflies, bees, and other pollinating insects, which play a big role in maintaining the balance of our ecosystem or environment. Many people plant them in their gardens as an alternative to carpet grass.
Harmfulness: Their biggest disadvantage is that they spread very quickly. Once they enter the crop field or landscaped garden, they quickly cover other grasses or small plants and take away their nutrients. Then it becomes quite difficult for farmers to clean these weeds.
Overall, the flower is quite beautiful. Do you see such wild flowers in the fields and ghats of your area? You can tell us in the comments.
I learned about them from various sites including iNaturalist, Wikipedia and Google.
(All posts are written in Bengali and translated into English using Google Translate.)
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| Camera Used | Samsung SM-G973F |
|---|---|
| F-Stop | F2.4 |
| ISO speed | ISO |
| Focal length | 26mm |
| Flash | No |
| Editing app | MIX |
| Photography | Turkey tangle frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) |
| Photographer |  |
| Location | Purulia, Natore, Bangladesh |
| Link to original community |
|---|
| https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/363657335 |
| Latitude | Longitude | Map Link |
|---|---|---|
| 24.3366 | 89.1113 | https://www.openstreetmap.org/?#map=12/24.3366/89.1113 |