(C.B.Clarke) Hutch.
Description
Aster falconeri is a high-alpine herb of the north-western and western Himalaya, recorded from India, Pakistan and Nepal, with some 147 georeferenced collections documenting a relatively narrow but well-sampled range. It occupies open turf, moist alpine meadows, grazed grassland and the margins of seepages and snowmelt flushes, typically between about 3100 and 4000 m. The photographed populations from West Nepal—Bhulbhule at 3600 m, Loccu at 3155 m and the slopes south of Rara Lake at 3500 m, all flowering in June—are characteristic of its early-summer phenology, the plants emerging and blooming soon after the snowpack recedes.
It is a perennial forming low tufts from a short rootstock, the stems erect to ascending, simple, glandular-hairy and bearing reduced cauline leaves. Basal and lower leaves are oblanceolate to spathulate, narrowed to a winged petiole, entire or obscurely toothed and somewhat hairy. The solitary terminal capitula are radiate, subtended by an involucre of subequal, herbaceous, often purple-tinged phyllaries; the ray florets are ligulate and blue to violet, surrounding a disc of yellow tubular florets. The fruit is a compressed, hairy cypsela crowned by a pappus of barbellate bristles aiding wind dispersal.
First described as a member of Erigeron by C. B. Clarke and transferred by Hutchinson, the taxon is treated under the name Aster falconeri, regarded as the accepted name notwithstanding its synonym status in the source dataset. As with many Sino-Himalayan asters, generic limits between Aster and Erigeron have shifted repeatedly with morphological and molecular reappraisal. Though not formally assessed for conservation, its restriction to montane pastures exposes it to heavy grazing pressure across the western ranges.
Author: (C.B.Clarke) Hutch. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Grierson & Long Flora of Bhutan, Grierson's revision of Himalayan Aster (Asteraceae)