Edgew. & Hook.f.
Description
Arenaria ciliolata is a small alpine sandwort of the central and eastern Himalaya, recorded from Nepal, Bhutan, India and China, with an additional outlying datum (gbif_countries: NP, BT, IN, CN, IS) and about 134 GBIF occurrences. It grows on open alpine turf, gravelly and stony slopes, rock crevices and screes well above the treeline, where it forms low cushions or mats in the cold, well-drained habitats typical of the genus. The illustrated material was collected near Saniti Lake in Sikkim at about 4250 m in August, a high-alpine setting where late-summer flowering follows snowmelt. In GBIF the name carries gbif_status SYNONYM, with Arenaria ciliolata given as the accepted name.
The plant is a tufted to mat-forming perennial arising from a branched woody base, with short, densely leafy stems. The leaves are small, opposite, sessile, narrow and rigid, often pungent-tipped and conspicuously ciliate on the margins, the feature evoked by the epithet. The flowers are solitary or few in lax cymes, with five free, white petals exceeding the five lanceolate, often ciliate-margined sepals; the stamens are typically ten and the styles three. The fruit is a capsule opening by valves or teeth at the apex to shed numerous small seeds.
Arenaria is a large, predominantly Northern Hemisphere genus of the pink family with a marked centre of diversity in the mountains of Asia, and the cushion-forming alpine species such as A. ciliolata have figured in repeated taxonomic and phylogenetic reassessments that have realigned segregates within tribe Arenarieae, accounting for the synonymy noted in GBIF. Adapted to harsh high-mountain conditions, the species is widespread across the Himalayan alpine zone and is of no conservation concern.
Author: Edgew. & Hook.f. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Nepal, Flora of China, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Caryophyllaceae account in The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants