(Royle) N.Kilian
Description
Melanoseris macrorhiza (Royle) N.Kilian is a Himalayan and Sino-Himalayan blue-flowered lettuce relative recorded from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, China and Myanmar, with around 468 georeferenced occurrences in GBIF. It grows on open alpine and subalpine slopes, in moist meadows, among rocks and along forest margins, typically between about 2700 and 4000 m. The collections from Chele-La at 3500 m in September and from Roha in West Nepal at 2700 m in July illustrate its broad Himalayan altitudinal range and its late-summer to autumn flowering.
It is a perennial herb arising, as the epithet macrorhiza indicates, from a stout, thickened taproot or rootstock, with milky latex characteristic of the tribe Cichorieae. The stems are erect and leafy below, becoming branched in the inflorescence. The leaves are lyrate-pinnatifid to runcinate, the basal ones petiolate and the cauline ones often clasping with auriculate bases. The capitula are wholly ligulate, with blue to violet-blue strap-shaped florets and a cylindric involucre of imbricate phyllaries. The fruit is a flattened, ribbed cypsela narrowed toward the apex and bearing a pappus of white, soft bristles.
The species has a complex nomenclatural history, having been placed at various times in Lactuca, Cicerbita and Cephalorrhynchus before transfer to Melanoseris, a predominantly Asian genus segregated within the lettuce alliance on the basis of cypsela and pappus characters supported by molecular data. It is a widespread montane element of no particular conservation concern.
Author: (Royle) N.Kilian · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Pakistan, Kilian revision of Cichorieae (Melanoseris)