(Hook.f. & Thomson) Engl.
Description
Bergenia purpurascens is a robust perennial of the high Himalaya and adjacent mountains, native to China, Nepal, India, Bhutan and Myanmar, and represented in cultivation across Europe and North America, where naturalised or garden-derived records inflate its GBIF tally to nearly a thousand occurrences. In the wild it is a plant of the alpine and upper subalpine belt, growing on rocky slopes, cliff ledges, moist meadows and the margins of rhododendron scrub. Field records illustrate this altitudinal range well: Sikkim at Yumthang around 3600 m in June, the Ludlow-Sherriff-Trail near Warrtlang-La in Bhutan at some 4500 m in June, and Kishong in West Bengal at about 3700 m in May.
The plant arises from a stout, woody, creeping rhizome bearing a basal rosette of large, leathery, obovate to elliptic leaves; these are glabrous, with entire to obscurely toothed margins and prominent reticulate venation, frequently flushing deep red or purple in autumn and cold exposure. The flowering scape is erect, reddish and glandular, terminating in a dense, nodding cyme. The flowers are showy, with five purple-red to magenta petals, a campanulate calyx of fleshy, often purplish sepals, ten stamens, and a bicarpellate ovary. The fruit is a capsule splitting to release numerous small seeds.
Described by Engler on the basis of Hooker and Thomson's material, B. purpurascens is the principal high-elevation representative of the genus in the eastern Himalaya. Its rhizomes are used in local traditional medicine, and the species is a parent of numerous ornamental Bergenia hybrids. It remains common within its broad range and is not considered threatened.
Author: (Hook.f. & Thomson) Engl. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Pan's monograph of Bergenia