Wall.
Description
Allium blandum is a high-alpine onion of the western Himalaya, recorded by GBIF across about 52 occurrences from China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal, an accepted species ranging along the drier inner ranges of the mountain chain. It is a plant of open, stony alpine pastures, gravelly slopes and rock ledges, generally above 3500 m and reaching well into the 4000-4500 m band. The image from Kagmara Phedi in west Nepal at 3900 m, flowering in July, captures its typical setting and midsummer phenology, when the snow-fed alpine turf is briefly in flower; in such habitats it grows scattered among cushion plants and grasses on well-drained, sunny ground exposed to the full intensity of high-mountain light.
The plant grows from a small ovoid bulb with membranous to slightly fibrous tunics, producing a slender scape usually 10-25 cm tall. The few basal leaves are narrowly linear, channelled and shorter than to about equalling the scape, withering as flowering proceeds. The inflorescence is a hemispherical to globose umbel of relatively few, pedicellate flowers subtended by a membranous spathe; the perianth segments are pink to rose-purple, often with a deeper midvein, campanulate to stellate at anthesis, with stamens shorter than or equalling the tepals. The fruit is a small loculicidal capsule bearing several black seeds.
Allium, the largest genus of the family Amaryllidaceae (subfamily Allioideae), is richly represented in the dry western Himalaya and Central Asia, and A. blandum belongs to the pink-flowered alpine assemblage allied to species such as A. carolinianum, with which it has historically been confused. It is distinguished by bulb tunic texture, leaf width and floral proportions. As a widespread but high-elevation species occurring across several countries it is not regarded as threatened, though like other Himalayan alpines it is locally subject to grazing and trampling on summer pastures.
Author: Wall. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Flora of Nepal, Flora of China Vol. 24, Stearn's revision of Himalayan and Central Asian Allium