(C.B.Clarke) Airy Shaw
Description
Gaultheria semi-infera is an Eastern Himalayan and Sino-Himalayan shrub centred on the eastern Himalaya and south-central China, with verified records from China (CN) and India (IN); the relatively modest pool of about 87 georeferenced occurrences reflects its restricted montane range, the records attributed to Canada (CA) and Spain (ES) representing cultivated or herbarium-based outliers rather than naturalised populations. It occupies the temperate to subalpine belt, typically between 2000 and 3500 m, growing in open coniferous and broad-leaved forest, on forest margins, among rhododendron scrub and on rocky banks. The plant photographed near Jakar in central Bhutan at about 2600 m in June is characteristic of this habitat, where the species flowers as the early monsoon develops.
It is a low, evergreen, much-branched shrub with wiry, often reddish-bristly young stems. The leaves are alternate, coriaceous, ovate to elliptic, serrulate or bristle-toothed at the margin, glossy dark green above and paler beneath, with the midrib and veins frequently set with stiff appressed bristles. The flowers are borne in short axillary racemes; each has a five-lobed campanular to urceolate corolla, white tinged pink, with the calyx becoming fleshy and accrescent in fruit. The diagnostic feature is the partly inferior ovary, from which the epithet semi-infera derives, so that the swelling fruit is a fleshy berry-like capsule, half-enclosed by the succulent calyx and ripening blue to blue-black.
The genus Gaultheria (Ericaceae, subfamily Vaccinioideae) is taxonomically complex in the Himalaya, where numerous species intergrade and hybridise. The semi-inferior ovary places this species in a distinctive group bridging the capsular and baccate fruit types within the genus. Like its relatives it produces aromatic, methyl-salicylate-bearing foliage and the ripe fruits are eaten by birds, aiding dispersal. Though not formally assessed as threatened, its dependence on intact temperate forest makes it sensitive to logging and grazing pressure across the Himalayan arc.
Author: (C.B.Clarke) Airy Shaw · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Airy Shaw revision of Himalayan Gaultheria, Lu & Fritsch monographic studies of Gaultheria (Ericaceae)