G.Don
Description
Swertia speciosa is a robust Himalayan gentian distributed through India, Pakistan, Nepal and China, the roughly 132 georeferenced records spanning the moist temperate and subalpine zones of the western and central Himalaya. It favours damp, open situations: tall-herb meadows, forest clearings, streamsides, shrubberies and grassy slopes, generally between about 2700 and 3900 m. The plant was photographed in the Garhwal Valley of Flowers at 3400 m in September, a habitat typical of the species, where it flowers in the late monsoon among lush herbaceous vegetation on cool, humus-rich soils.
It is one of the largest swertias, a stout erect biennial or short-lived perennial herb reaching well over a metre, with a hollow, often purple-tinged, four-angled stem. The leaves are large, ovate to elliptic, prominently several-nerved, the basal ones petiolate and the cauline ones sessile and opposite. The inflorescence is a broad, leafy, much-branched panicle of numerous flowers. Each flower is four- or five-merous with a rotate, greenish-yellow corolla conspicuously veined and dotted with dark purple, the lobes bearing paired fringed nectary pits (foveolae) near the base. The fruit is a many-seeded ovoid capsule splitting septicidally.
Swertia (tribe Gentianeae) is a large Old World genus in which species are separated chiefly by nectary number, position and the form of their marginal fringes, and S. speciosa is distinguished by its great stature and richly veined corolla. Like its relatives it is rich in bitter secoiridoid glycosides and is gathered in Himalayan folk medicine as a tonic and febrifuge, sold under the trade complex of "chiretta." Though widespread and not formally assessed as threatened, such medicinal harvesting warrants monitoring of wild stands.
Author: G.Don · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Flowers of the Himalaya (Polunin & Stainton)