(C.B. Clarke) Benth. ex Gamble
Description
Leptoboea multiflora is a perennial herb of the eastern Himalaya and adjacent Southeast Asia, with 153 GBIF occurrences recorded from India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. As a member of the Gesneriaceae, it grows in shaded, humid forest, typically on mossy rocks, boulders, banks and tree bases in damp, sheltered situations of the temperate broad-leaved zone, often between about 1500 and 3000 m. The plant photographed at Paro in Bhutan at 3000 m in July occupies the upper end of this range, flowering during the moist monsoon period when atmospheric humidity is high.
The species is a low, herbaceous to slightly succulent perennial with short stems and leaves that may be clustered or subopposite, the blades ovate to elliptic, crenate to serrate at the margins and frequently pubescent, with the asymmetric, anisophyllous tendency common in the family. The flowers are numerous, as the epithet indicates, borne in axillary cymes; each has a small five-lobed calyx and a tubular, somewhat bilabiate corolla, with the typically reduced fertile stamen number of the gesneriad tribe and a superior ovary. The fruit is a slender, elongate capsule dehiscing to release very numerous minute seeds.
The entry lists the family as Trichosporeae, which is in fact a tribe of Gesneriaceae rather than a family; the accurate placement is Gesneriaceae, subfamily Didymocarpoideae, tribe Trichosporeae, within which Leptoboea is a small Asian genus allied to Boea and Paraboea. As a humidity-dependent epilithic forest herb, it is sensitive to canopy disturbance, though it remains locally frequent in undisturbed montane forest.
Author: (C.B. Clarke) Benth. ex Gamble · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 18, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Pakistan, Weber's classification of Gesneriaceae