Hausskn.
Description
Epilobium conspersum is a perennial herb of the Sino-Himalayan and East Asian mountains, distributed through southwestern China, Nepal, northern India, Myanmar, Bhutan and Japan, with introduced records in the United States; GBIF documents about 134 occurrences. It is a plant of moist, open subalpine and alpine habitats such as stream banks, wet meadows and gravelly flushes, typically between about 3000 and 4200 m. The photographed plant was collected at Dzongri in western Sikkim at around 3900 m in August, on the cool, wet ground this willowherb favours during the monsoon. In GBIF the name carries the status SYNONYM, while Epilobium conspersum is here recognised as the accepted name for this Himalayan material.
The plant produces erect to ascending stems from a perennating base that overwinters by leafy rosettes or short turions. The leaves are opposite below and alternate above, sessile or shortly petiolate, lanceolate to ovate, with a toothed margin, the stems often finely hairy in lines. The flowers are borne in the upper leaf axils; as in the genus they have an inferior, elongate ovary, four notched pink to rose-purple petals, four sepals and eight stamens. The fruit is a long, slender, four-valved capsule that splits to release numerous seeds, each bearing a silky coma for wind dispersal.
Epilobium (Onagraceae) is a large temperate and cold-region genus in which the comose seeds and elongate capsular fruit are diagnostic. The Himalayan species form a taxonomically intricate group, and the synonymy reflected in the GBIF status underscores their nomenclatural complexity. Widespread along its moist alpine corridor, the species is not considered threatened.
Author: Hausskn. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 13, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Pakistan, Raven monograph of Old World Epilobium