(Royle) X.D.Xu & V.A.Funk
Description
Oreoseris gossypina is a rosette-forming perennial herb of the temperate and subalpine Himalaya, recorded from Pakistan, India, Nepal, China and Bhutan across more than 300 occurrences. It typically inhabits open grassy slopes, rocky banks and forest margins, often on disturbed or grazed ground, at elevations of roughly 1800 to 3500 m. The documented collections derive from Garhwal in India, at Didina (2470 m, September) and the Nanu Mandakini valley (2300 m, June), the two dates spanning much of its long flowering and fruiting season in the Western Himalaya.
The plant produces a basal rosette of obovate to oblanceolate leaves that are conspicuously white-woolly beneath, the dense cottony indumentum giving rise to the epithet gossypina. The leaf margins are sinuate-dentate and the lamina narrows into a winged petiole. Solitary capitula are borne on slender, bracteate scapes; each head is heterogamous and radiate, with an involucre of imbricate, often arachnoid-hairy phyllaries. The marginal ray florets are ligulate and pale, the disc florets tubular; the achenes are ribbed and surmounted by a pappus of barbellate bristles aiding wind dispersal.
The species was long placed in Gerbera and is also encountered under Leibnitzia; its current placement in Oreoseris (Mutisieae) reflects molecular and morphological revision by X.D. Xu and V.A. Funk. As a member of an early-diverging composite lineage it is of phylogenetic interest, and its mutisioid floral structure attracts a range of pollinating insects. The species is widespread and faces no recognised threat.
Author: (Royle) X.D.Xu & V.A.Funk · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Pakistan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Xu & Funk revision of Mutisieae