Hook.f. & Thomson
Description
Chrysosplenium lanuginosum Hook.f. & Thomson is a small golden-saxifrage of the Sino-Himalayan region, recorded from China, Taiwan, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Japan, with around 430 occurrences in GBIF. It is a herb of moist, shaded habitats, growing on wet rocks, streambanks, seepage faces, mossy ledges and damp forest floors, broadly between about 1000 and 3000 m. The photographed plant was found at Punakha in Bhutan at about 1310 m in May, in the warm, humid lower-montane forest zone where this creeping herb forms patches on perpetually wet substrates beside watercourses.
The plant is a low, soft, stoloniferous perennial spreading by slender prostrate runners that root at the nodes, the whole plant clothed in a soft woolly indumentum (the epithet lanuginosum, woolly). The leaves are alternate or the lower opposite, orbicular to flabellate or broadly ovate with a crenate margin, somewhat fleshy and hairy. The inflorescence is a small terminal cyme subtended by leafy, often yellowish-green floral bracts that enhance the display. The flowers are minute and apetalous, the showy part being the four greenish-yellow sepals; the stamens are typically eight, and the ovary is half-inferior. The fruit is a small two-beaked capsule splitting to release numerous tiny seeds.
Within Saxifragaceae, Chrysosplenium is a distinctive genus of shade- and moisture-loving herbs distinguished by their petal-less flowers and conspicuous coloured bracts that attract small insect pollinators. Adapted to constantly humid, low-light microhabitats, the species is an indicator of clean seepage and streamside conditions. It is fairly widespread across the eastern Himalaya and not of conservation concern, though dependent on undisturbed riparian forest.
Author: Hook.f. & Thomson · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Hara revision of Asiatic Chrysosplenium