Simonov.
Description
Adonis nepalensis is an alpine perennial herb of the central and eastern Himalaya, recorded from Nepal, India and Bhutan (the additional scattered GBIF records from Hungary and Morocco almost certainly representing cultivated or misattributed material), with a small total of 28 occurrences in GBIF. It is a plant of high open habitats, growing in alpine meadows, grassy and rocky slopes and the margins of dwarf scrub near and above the treeline. The photographed plant was collected on the Singalila ridge on the Sikkim/India border at about 4200 m in May, a high-altitude spring-flowering station typical of the species, which blooms soon after snowmelt.
The plant grows from a short, stout rootstock and produces erect, leafy stems. The leaves are alternate and finely dissected, repeatedly divided into narrow, linear ultimate segments, giving them a feathery aspect characteristic of the genus. The flowers are solitary and terminal, fairly large and showy, with numerous spreading petals that are yellow (the usual colour in the Himalayan species), subtended by a green, dissected involucre of leaf-like bracts; the numerous stamens and free carpels are borne on a slightly elongate receptacle. The fruit is a head of small, dry, one-seeded achenes.
Adonis belongs to the Ranunculaceae and, like many genera of the family, contains cardiac glycosides and other toxic compounds. Adonis nepalensis is the principal Himalayan representative, distinguished by its alpine habit and yellow flowers, and is a relatively narrow-ranged montane species. Its high-elevation, snowmelt-dependent populations make it of biogeographic interest as part of the specialised Himalayan alpine flora and potentially sensitive to warming and to the disturbance of fragile alpine turf.
Author: Simonov. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Ranunculaceae of the Himalaya