(D.Don) Sch.Bip.
Description
Ainsliaea latifolia is a widely distributed perennial herb of the Sino-Himalayan and Southeast Asian region, recorded from China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia, with over a thousand documented occurrences. It is a characteristic understorey plant of subtropical and warm-temperate broadleaved forest, growing on shaded banks, forest floors, grassy clearings and stream margins from the foothills to the middle hills. The individual shown was recorded along the Punakha Chu in western Bhutan at about 1500 m in April, a setting typical of its preference for moist, humus-rich ground beneath oak and evergreen forest.
The plant arises from a short, stout rhizome and is conspicuous for its basal rosette of broad, long-petiolate leaves; the laminae are ovate to broadly ovate or orbicular, cordate at the base, with a shortly acuminate apex and entire to denticulate margins, often purplish and pubescent beneath. From the centre of the rosette rises a slender, leafless or bracteate scape bearing an elongate, spike-like to narrowly paniculate inflorescence. The small capitula are cylindrical and characteristically three-flowered, each floret with a deeply lobed, bilabiate corolla typical of the Mutisioideae. The achenes are ribbed and pubescent, crowned by a copious pappus of plumose, reddish-brown bristles.
The species belongs to Ainsliaea, a genus of the basal asteraceous subfamily Mutisioideae centred on East Asia and the Himalaya, distinguished by its three-flowered heads and rosulate habit. It exhibits considerable variation in leaf shape and indumentum across its extensive range, and several infraspecific taxa have been recognised. Long used in regional folk medicine, it is locally common and faces no significant conservation concern across most of its distribution.
Author: (D.Don) Sch.Bip. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of British India, Revision of the genus Ainsliaea (Mutisieae)