Harry Sm.
Description
Swertia pseudohookeri is an eastern Himalayan species recorded from Bhutan, Nepal and India, represented in occurrence databases by a modest 17 georeferenced records that reflect both its restricted distribution and its limited collection. It is a plant of high-alpine habitats—moist meadows, open turf, streamsides and the damp margins of glacial lakes—generally near and above 4000 m. The illustrated population at Jule-Tso in Bhutan, photographed at 4000 m in June, typifies its occurrence around tarns and snowmelt flushes where it flowers in the brief alpine summer.
It is an erect annual or short-lived perennial herb with a slender, often quadrangular and sometimes narrowly winged stem arising from a fibrous root. The leaves are opposite, sessile and lanceolate to ovate, with the basal leaves usually larger and the upper ones progressively reduced and bract-like. The inflorescence is a lax, few- to many-flowered cyme; the flowers are typically four- to five-merous with a deeply divided rotate corolla, the lobes pale to bluish or purplish and marked with darker veining, each bearing nectary pits fringed with fimbriae. The fruit is a septicidal, ovoid capsule containing numerous small seeds.
The epithet pseudohookeri, coined by Harry Smith, signals its close morphological resemblance to Swertia hookeri, from which it is distinguished by floral and nectary characters. Swertia is a large, taxonomically intricate genus in the Gentianaceae whose Himalayan members have long been used in traditional medicine for their bitter secoiridoid compounds. Owing to its narrow range and high-elevation niche, S. pseudohookeri is potentially vulnerable to climatic shifts and habitat disturbance, though it has not been formally evaluated.
Author: Harry Sm. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Grierson & Long Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Flora of China (Gentianaceae), Harry Smith's monographic studies on Asiatic Swertia
