C.B.Clarke
Description
Gentiana sikkimensis is an eastern Himalayan and Sino-Himalayan gentian recorded from China, India, Nepal and Bhutan, with nearly 200 georeferenced occurrences in GBIF. It is a characteristic plant of alpine turf, open moist meadows and the margins of dwarf-shrub heath in the high mountains, generally between about 3500 and 4500 m. The illustrated plant from Tumching-La in Bhutan at 4100 m, flowering in October, reflects the genus's late autumnal flowering, when these small gentians colour the alpine sward after the main summer bloom has passed.
It is a small tufted perennial herb with a short caudex and slender, ascending to decumbent flowering stems. The basal leaves form a rosette and are narrowly oblong to spathulate, while the cauline leaves are smaller, opposite and sessile, with cartilaginous margins. The flowers are solitary or few in terminal clusters, the campanulate to narrowly funnelform corolla deep blue with paler longitudinal bands and bearing well-developed plicae (folds) between the lobes. The calyx is tubular with unequal lobes, and the fruit is a stipitate, two-valved capsule releasing numerous small seeds.
The species belongs to Gentiana section Frigida (or allied sections of the autumn-flowering Asian gentians), a group much diversified across the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and its margins. It is widespread and not regarded as threatened, although alpine gentians of this kind are sensitive to overgrazing and to the upward shift of vegetation belts under a warming climate, making long-term monitoring of high-elevation populations worthwhile.
Author: C.B.Clarke · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Ho & Pringle monograph of Gentiana