DC.
Description
Doronicum roylei is a Himalayan leopard's-bane distributed from Pakistan and the Western Himalaya through India and Nepal into Bhutan, with GBIF recording 67 occurrences across PK, IN, NP and BT. It grows in subalpine and alpine meadows, on open grassy slopes, among shrubberies and along moist banks, broadly between about 3000 and 4200 m. The photographed plant was found in West Nepal at Churta-Khola near 3200 m, flowering in June. In the GBIF backbone the name is flagged as a SYNONYM, with Doronicum roylei itself given as the accepted name, so that binomial is retained here as the correct designation.
The species is a perennial herb arising from a short, often tuberous or knotty rhizome, with erect, simple or sparingly branched, glandular-hairy stems. The basal and lower leaves are petiolate, ovate to cordate and toothed, while the upper cauline leaves become sessile and amplexicaul, clasping the stem. The capitula are large, radiate and usually solitary (or few), with an involucre of narrow green phyllaries; the bright yellow ray florets are female and ligulate, surrounding numerous yellow, tubular, bisexual disc florets. The fruit is a cypsela, typically with a pappus of fine bristles on the disc florets, in the manner characteristic of the genus.
Doronicum is a genus of the tribe Senecioneae centred on the temperate mountains of Eurasia, with a notable Himalayan and Central Asian radiation. As a showy meadow composite it is a typical component of Himalayan summer-flowering alpine flora. It is locally common across its range and is not regarded as threatened, though grazing pressure affects accessible high pastures.
Author: DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Flora of China (Asteraceae: Senecioneae)