Ker Gawl.
Description
Gagea lutea is a widely distributed Eurasian geophyte, abundant across temperate Europe and northern Asia, with a very large GBIF dataset of over 97000 records from Sweden, Germany, France, Britain, Poland, Russia, Norway, the Netherlands and many other countries, extending eastward to Japan. It grows in deciduous woodland, riverine forest, hedgerows, damp meadows and shaded slopes, typically on moist, base-rich soils. As a spring ephemeral it flowers early and dies back by summer. The photographed plant from the Mewa-Khola valley in eastern Nepal at 3100 m, flowering in April, marks the southeastern Himalayan edge of its range, where it persists in cool, humid montane forest.
It is a small bulbous perennial with a single ovoid bulb. The defining feature is the solitary, broadly linear to linear-lanceolate basal leaf, which is flat, hooded at the apex, somewhat keeled and usually exceeds the inflorescence. Two unequal leaf-like bracts subtend the umbel-like cyme of few flowers. Each flower has six free, narrowly oblong tepals that are bright yellow within and green-striped outside, blunt to subacute at the apex. There are six stamens with yellow anthers and a superior three-locular ovary bearing a single style. The fruit is a loculicidal, obovoid to subglobose capsule producing flattened, subglobose seeds.
Gagea lutea is the type species of its genus and belongs to the tribe Tulipeae of the Liliaceae. It is the well-known Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem, often forming clonal patches; many populations are non-flowering and reproduce vegetatively by bulbils, complicating field census. Pollination is by early-flying bees and flies, and the elaiosome-bearing seeds are partly ant-dispersed (myrmecochory). Though locally declining through woodland loss, it remains common over its vast range and is of least concern.
Author: Ker Gawl. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 24, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Pakistan, Levichev Studies in the Genus Gagea (monograph)