(Hook.f.) Aswal & Mehrotra
Description
Cirsium wallichii var. platylepis is a Himalayan thistle taxon recorded by GBIF only from India, with about 8 occurrences, reflecting its status as a narrowly recognised variety raised by Aswal and Mehrotra from a Hooker name. It occupies open grassy slopes, pastures, forest margins, clearings and disturbed banks through the temperate and subalpine zones, broadly 2000 to 3300 m. The plant photographed at Gaushon in the Indian Himalaya at 3000 m in September, flowering and fruiting at the close of the monsoon, is consistent with its preference for sunny, somewhat disturbed montane grassland.
It is a robust biennial or perennial herb forming an erect, often winged and spiny stem from a stout rootstock. The leaves are oblong to lanceolate in outline, pinnatifid to pinnatisect, the lobes and margins armed with sharp spines and the undersurface frequently whitish-tomentose. The capitula are large and ovoid to subglobose, solitary or clustered, subtended by an involucre of many spine-tipped bracts; the variety platylepis is distinguished chiefly by its broader involucral phyllaries. The florets are tubular and pinkish-purple to whitish, and the cypselae are smooth and crowned by a pappus of plumose, feathery bristles that aid wind dispersal.
Cirsium is a large genus of true thistles in which Himalayan taxa form a difficult complex, and the variety platylepis represents fine-scale infraspecific differentiation within the widespread C. wallichii. The spiny armature and bitter foliage deter grazing in heavily pastured uplands, while the plumose pappus disperses the achenes effectively across open ground. As a narrowly defined variety with few records, its taxonomic standing merits further study, though the parent species is common and the entity is of no immediate conservation concern.
Author: (Hook.f.) Aswal & Mehrotra · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of India (Asteraceae), Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Flora of China (Asteraceae), Petrak revision of Asian Cirsium