Ledeb.
Description
Agrimonia pilosa is a broadly distributed temperate herb ranging across much of Eurasia, from central and eastern Europe through Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia to China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and southward into the Himalaya in Nepal, India and Bhutan as well as Vietnam and Indonesia. With over 25,600 GBIF records it is among the most frequently collected agrimonies. It grows in grassy and disturbed places, forest margins, meadows, roadsides and scrub over a wide elevational range. The Bhutanese material photographed near Trongsa at 2000 m in October represents the species in mid-montane meadow habitat of the eastern Himalaya, flowering and fruiting late in the season.
The plant is an erect perennial herb arising from a short rhizome, with stems clothed in spreading hairs. The leaves are imparipinnate, comprising several principal toothed leaflets interspersed with much smaller intercalary leaflets, and bear conspicuous toothed stipules at the base. The small yellow flowers are borne in a long, slender, terminal raceme; each has five sepals, five obovate petals and numerous stamens. The diagnostic fruit is a top-shaped, grooved hypanthium crowned by a ring of hooked bristles that close over the apex and act as an epizoochorous dispersal mechanism, catching on fur and clothing.
Agrimonia pilosa is distinguished from the related A. eupatoria by its more obconical, deeply furrowed fruit whose outermost hooked bristles are spreading to deflexed rather than erect. The species has a long history of use in traditional East Asian and European herbal medicine, where it is valued for astringent and haemostatic properties. Ecologically it is a competitive component of secondary grassland and forest-edge communities, and its hooked fruits ensure effective animal dispersal; it is common throughout its vast range and of no conservation concern.
Author: Ledeb. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Skalicky's revision of Agrimonia (monograph)