(Hook.f.) Kitam.
Description
Cremanthodium ellisii is an alpine perennial of the Himalaya and the eastern Tibetan plateau, recorded from China, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bhutan, with 754 occurrences in GBIF. It is a plant of high, open habitats: alpine meadows, scree, moraine, rocky slopes and stream margins, characteristically between 3500 and 5600 m, ranking among the highest-ascending composites of the region. The Nepalese collection figured, from Rupien La at 3900 m in October, reflects its occupancy of cold, exposed pass environments and its persistence into late autumn at the lower edge of its altitudinal span, on stony, well-drained alpine soils.
It forms a stout perennial rootstock from which arise erect, often woolly or purplish flowering stems 10-40 cm tall. The basal leaves are petiolate with ovate to reniform, dentate to lobed blades, while the stem leaves become smaller and amplexicaul upward. The stems are crowned by one to several large, nodding (cernuous) capitula, the nodding habit characteristic of the genus; the involucral bracts are densely covered with dark or pale hairs. Ray florets are golden-yellow, ligulate and female, surrounding numerous tubular yellow disc florets. The fruit is a glabrous cylindrical achene bearing a pappus of soft white bristles.
Cremanthodium (Asteraceae, tribe Senecioneae) is a Sino-Himalayan genus of roughly seventy species, closely allied to Ligularia and Senecio and distinguished by its nodding heads, an adaptation protecting florets from rain and intense alpine irradiance. C. ellisii is a variable, widespread species, broadly distributed and not threatened, though as a true alpine specialist it is potentially vulnerable to upward habitat compression under climate warming.
Author: (Hook.f.) Kitam. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Monograph of Cremanthodium (Compositae, Senecioneae)