(Wolf) Soják
Description
A high-alpine cushion-forming herb of the central and eastern Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau, recorded across China, Nepal, India and Pakistan, with some 175 georeferenced GBIF occurrences. It occupies dry, open alpine turf, gravelly slopes, rocky ledges and exposed ridge crests, typically between about 3500 and 5000 m. The depicted plant was photographed in June on the Chele-La in western Bhutan at roughly 3950 m, a windswept pass habitat where dwarfed, mat-forming growth is favoured under intense insolation, cold nights and a short summer growing season.
The taxon forms dense, low caespitose tufts arising from a thick, branched, often woody-based rootstock crowned with marcescent stipules and leaf remnants. The leaves are digitate (palmate), with three to five obovate, deeply incised-serrate leaflets that are green and sparsely strigose above and densely white-tomentose beneath, the indumentum giving the foliage a silvery cast. Slender, ascending cymes bear few yellow flowers; each has five sepals alternating with smaller epicalyx segments, five obcordate golden petals slightly exceeding the calyx, numerous stamens and an apocarpous gynoecium of many free carpels. The fruit is a cluster of small, glabrous, smooth to faintly rugose achenes.
GBIF treats the name as a synonym, with Potentilla saundersiana caespitosa accepted; the variety represents a compact, densely tufted high-elevation expression of the widespread, polymorphic P. saundersiana complex. The species is one of many silvery alpine cinquefoils whose infraspecific limits remain debated. Ecologically it stabilises thin alpine soils and provides nectar to short-season pollinators. Though local populations are restricted to specialised habitats, the broad geographic range and abundance of suitable terrain mean it is not regarded as threatened.
Author: (Wolf) Soják · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Soják revisions of Potentilla