Klatt
Description
Androsace hookeriana is an eastern Himalayan rock-jasmine recorded in GBIF from Nepal, China, Bhutan and India across 120 occurrences. It grows in moist alpine meadows, grassy slopes, seepage flushes and among rocks, generally between 3500 and 4300 m. The cited collections span Sikkim's Vista valley at about 3800 m, Chele-La in Bhutan at 3800 m, and Labana in Bhutan at 4000 m, all flowering in June, indicating an early-summer alpine species that exploits damp, freshly snow-freed turf. Named for the botanist J. D. Hooker, it is a characteristic component of high eastern Himalayan herbfields.
It is a small rosette-forming perennial, the basal leaves spathulate to oblanceolate, narrowed to the base, with a sparse to dense covering of fine hairs. From the rosette rises a slender, hairy scape a few centimetres to about 15 cm tall, bearing a terminal umbel of several flowers subtended by an involucre of narrow bracts; the pedicels are hairy. Each flower has a campanulate, hairy calyx divided to about the middle and a salverform white to pale pink corolla with a yellow or pinkish eye and five rounded lobes. The fruit is a small, valvate capsule containing a few angular seeds.
As a member of Androsace (Primulaceae), the species belongs to a genus of predominantly arctic-alpine herbs richly diversified across the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau. Its scapose, umbellate habit aligns it with the meadow-dwelling rosette species rather than the tight cushion-formers of higher scree. Pollination is by small dipterans and other insects drawn to the eye-ring, and seeds are dispersed by gravity and wind. It is locally frequent and of no recognised conservation concern.
Author: Klatt · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Smith and Lowe Monograph of Androsace