(Hook.f. & Thomson) Al-Shehbaz & G.Yang
Description
Cardamine pulchella is a delicate perennial herb of the Sino-Himalayan high mountains, recorded by GBIF from China, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar across about 147 occurrences. It inhabits cool, moist alpine and subalpine sites, growing on damp grassy slopes, beside rills and snowmelt flushes, and in open turf among rocks, generally from around 2800 to over 4500 m. The image from Kishong in West Bengal at about 2800 m, flowering in May, captures it near the lower edge of its range, where the early-season moisture of melting snow supports its slender, soft growth.
The plant arises from a slender creeping rhizome and produces low, often somewhat fleshy stems. The leaves are pinnately divided or compound, with a few rounded to oblong leaflets, the terminal leaflet frequently larger; both basal and cauline leaves are present, and the foliage is thin-textured and glabrous to sparsely hairy. The flowers are borne in a short few-flowered raceme and are relatively large for the genus, with four free sepals and four spreading petals that are white to pale lilac or pinkish-purple, conspicuous against the small stature of the plant. There are six tetradynamous stamens. The fruit is a slender linear silique that opens by two valves springing elastically from the persistent septum to scatter the seeds.
The species was transferred to its current placement by Al-Shehbaz and G. Yang, reflecting modern molecular and morphological reassessment of the alpine Asian Cardamine. It is part of a group of high-elevation crucifers adapted to short growing seasons and cold, wet substrates, completing flowering and fruiting rapidly after snowmelt. Though not assessed as threatened, such specialised alpine herbs are vulnerable to the upward compression of suitable habitat under climate warming, and to disturbance of fragile snowbed and flush communities.
Author: (Hook.f. & Thomson) Al-Shehbaz & G.Yang · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Al-Shehbaz revisions of Asian Brassicaceae, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal