Schrenk
Description
Draba oreades is a circum-Asian alpine crucifer with a wide range across the mountains of Central Asia and the Himalaya into Siberia and Mongolia; GBIF records nearly 1200 occurrences spanning China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and beyond. It is a true alpine, growing on stony slopes, screes, moraines, rock ledges and gravelly alpine turf, generally above 3500 m and ascending well beyond 4500 m. The photograph from the Kagmara-La in West Nepal in July depicts it flowering in midsummer on a high Himalayan pass, the brief window when these cold-desert and alpine habitats become accessible to its yellow-flowered cushions.
It is a small, tufted or cushion-forming perennial herb arising from a branched, often woody caudex clothed in persistent old leaves. The leaves are mostly in dense basal rosettes, oblong to oblanceolate or spathulate, entire, and covered with stellate and simple hairs giving a greyish, scabrid texture. The flowering stems are short, leafless or few-leaved and bear compact corymbose racemes that elongate in fruit. Flowers are small with four bright yellow petals, fading paler. The fruit is a short, ovate to oblong-elliptic silicula, somewhat compressed and often twisted or hairy, containing several small seeds in two rows.
Draba is a large and notoriously complex genus of cold and high-mountain regions, and D. oreades belongs to the yellow-flowered, cushion-forming alpine assemblage adapted to short seasons, intense radiation and frost. Such compact, taprooted, densely hairy growth forms are classic alpine convergences conserving heat and moisture. The species is widespread and not threatened, serving as a characteristic pioneer of unstable high-elevation substrates throughout the Asian highlands.
Author: Schrenk · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China (Brassicaceae), Flora of Pakistan, Jordal & Al-Shehbaz studies of Draba