Wall. ex Duby
Description
Primula involucrata Wall. ex Duby is a perennial of the high Himalaya and adjacent Tibetan plateau, ranging through Nepal, northern India, Bhutan and western China, with disjunct populations extending into Central Asia. The species is documented from West-Nepal at Churta-Khola near 3850 m and from the Garhwal Himalaya at Khiar Kutti around 3900 m, both flowering in June. It is a plant of damp alpine and subalpine meadows, marshy stream margins, seepage slopes and the moist turf bordering glacial pools, typically between 3000 and 4500 m, where snowmelt sustains saturated soils through the brief growing season. The very high GBIF occurrence count chiefly reflects records aggregated under the broadly circumscribed genus Primula rather than this taxon alone.
The plant forms a small, glabrous rosette of long-petiolate, elliptic to ovate-oblong leaves with entire or finely crenulate margins, often faintly farinose beneath. A slender, leafless scape rises to 10–25 cm and bears a terminal umbel of few to several flowers subtended by a conspicuous involucre of lanceolate bracts, from which the epithet derives. The flowers are sweetly fragrant, with a tubular calyx and a white to pale lilac or pinkish corolla marked by a yellow eye, the limb divided into five emarginate, spreading lobes. The fruit is a small cylindrical capsule dehiscing by apical valves and releasing numerous minute seeds.
Primula involucrata belongs to section Aleuritia (the farinose primulas), a group centred on the Sino-Himalayan and arctic-alpine zones and characterised by farina, heterostyly and umbellate inflorescences. Its preference for wet, base-rich alpine flushes makes it a useful indicator of stable hydrological conditions. Though locally common across its wide montane range and not currently of conservation concern, populations are vulnerable to grazing pressure, trampling and the drying of high-altitude wetlands under a warming climate.
Author: Wall. ex Duby · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Nepal, Flora of China, Flora of British India, Primula (Richards, monograph of the genus)