(Royle ex Benth.) C.E.C.Fisch.
Description
Hackelia uncinata (Royle ex Benth.) C.E.C.Fisch. is a perennial herb of the Himalaya and Central Asian mountains, with GBIF recording some 417 occurrences across China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Mongolia and Russia. It grows in forest clearings, on shaded banks, among subalpine scrub and in moist meadow on the cooler slopes of the temperate to subalpine zone, flowering in early summer. The cited collections, from south of Rara Lake in west Nepal at 3600 m in June and from Mahji in Garhwal (Indian Himalaya) at 2650 m in June, illustrate its preference for partly shaded, humus-rich montane sites where it forms loose stands.
The plant produces erect to ascending, pubescent stems from a perennial rootstock, bearing alternate, ovate-lanceolate to elliptic leaves that are softly hairy, the lower ones petiolate and the upper sessile. The small flowers are arranged in lax, branched, scorpioid cymes; the corolla is rotate to shortly funnelform, pale blue to violet, with five lobes and prominent throat appendages (fornices). The diagnostic feature, reflected in the epithet uncinata, lies in the four nutlets, whose margins bear a row of glochidiate (hooked, barbed) prickles that catch on fur and clothing, effecting epizoochorous dispersal.
Hackelia, segregated from Lappula and the broader stickseed assemblage, is distinguished by nutlet ornamentation and is centred on the temperate mountains of Asia and the Americas. The hooked nutlets are an effective adaptation for animal-mediated dispersal across open montane terrain. The species is widespread and not of conservation concern, occurring frequently in both natural and lightly disturbed habitats throughout its broad Himalayan and Central Asian range.
Author: (Royle ex Benth.) C.E.C.Fisch. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Nepal, Flora of China, Boraginaceae of the Western Himalaya, Brand monograph on Hackelia and Lappula