Asteraceae

Asteraceae

Ajania myriantha

Asteraceae

Anaphalis busua

Asteraceae

Aster peduncularis 

Asteraceae

Aster ageratoides

Asteraceae

Asteraceae

Tricholepis furcata

by GP Jürgens

DC.

Bhutan2015 462
Bhutan Trongsa 2100m, October
Bhutan2012 1326
Bhutan Pemagatse 1900m, October

Description

Tricholepis furcata is a thistle-like composite of the Himalaya and adjacent regions, recorded from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan and China, with 148 georeferenced occurrences. It is a plant of open, sunny, often dry situations, occupying grassy hill slopes, scrub, rocky banks, roadsides and disturbed ground in the subtropical to lower temperate zone, typically between about 1000 and 2500 m. It was photographed near Trongsa at 2100 m and Pemagatse at 1900 m in Bhutan in October, flowering at the close of the monsoon when many montane composites reach their peak on warm, well-drained slopes.

It is an erect, branched perennial or biennial herb, the slender striate stems often forking (furcate) above and bearing alternate, narrow, entire to pinnately divided leaves that are roughly hairy and frequently decurrent on the stem. The flower heads are solitary or few at the branch tips, with an ovoid involucre of many imbricate bracts whose tips are characteristically fringed or laciniate, a diagnostic feature of the genus Tricholepis. All florets are tubular (discoid) and pink to purple, the corolla deeply five-lobed. The fruit is a small obovoid cypsela crowned by a pappus of barbellate or plumose bristles.

The genus Tricholepis belongs to tribe Cardueae (the thistle tribe) and is centred on the Indian subcontinent and Iran, allied to Centaurea and Saussurea. The fimbriate phyllary tips that give the genus its name ("hairy scale") separate it from related cardueoid genera. Ecologically the species is a coloniser of open and disturbed slopes and contributes to autumn-flowering grassland communities. It is widespread and common, of no conservation concern.

Author: DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Pakistan, Compositae monograph (Cardueae, in The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants)

Asteraceae

Youngia racemifera

by GP Jürgens

(Hook.f.) Babc. & Stebbins

Bhutan2015 494
Bhutan Phobjika 2620m, October
Bhutan2012 173
Bhutan Haar-Valley, 3200m September

Description

Youngia racemifera is a Sino-Himalayan species recorded from China, Nepal, Bhutan, India and Myanmar, GBIF holding around 209 occurrences across this eastern montane range. It is a plant of open temperate to subalpine habitats, growing on grassy and shrubby slopes, forest clearings, banks and disturbed ground where light is abundant and soils are moist but well drained. The cited localities, Phobjika in central Bhutan at 2620 m in October and the Haar Valley in the west at 3200 m in September, place it in the upper temperate to subalpine belt, flowering and fruiting through the late summer and autumn as the monsoon wanes and the high valleys cool.

It is an erect perennial or biennial herb with a leafy, branching, glabrous to sparsely hairy stem exuding milky latex when broken, as is typical of the tribe. The lower leaves are oblanceolate and runcinate-pinnatifid to lyrate, narrowed to a winged base, the upper leaves smaller and less divided, sometimes amplexicaul. The numerous small capitula are arranged in an elongate, racemose to paniculate synflorescence, reflected in the epithet. Each head is homogamous and ligulate, containing several yellow ray florets only; the involucre is cylindric with a single main row of phyllaries and small outer bracts. The cypselae are narrowly fusiform and ribbed, surmounted by a pappus of soft white barbellate bristles.

Youngia (tribe Cichorieae) is a genus of around thirty species centred on East Asia and the Himalaya, distinguished from related lettuce-like genera by its small few-flowered capitula and beakless ribbed cypselae. Based on a Hooker name and transferred by Babcock and Stebbins in their classic study of the group, Y. racemifera is treated as accepted. Its bright yellow ligulate heads attract small bees and flies. As a tolerant plant of open and disturbed montane habitats, it is widespread and of no conservation concern.

Author: (Hook.f.) Babc. & Stebbins · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Babcock & Stebbins' monograph of Crepidinae (Youngia)