Wall.
2350 m, April
Description
Gaultheria fragrantissima Wall. is a wide-ranging evergreen shrub of the eastern Himalaya and montane tropical Asia, documented from Nepal, India, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, with a substantial body of records (GBIF reports some 1,853 occurrences, the higher latitudes among them reflecting cultivation or introduction). It occupies forest margins, open hillsides, secondary scrub and clearings in oak, rhododendron and broad-leaved evergreen forest, typically at 1,500-2,800 m. The photographed material comes from central and eastern Nepal, at Tankhu (2,200 m) and the Jaljale Himal (2,350 m), both in April, where it flowers on sunny, well-drained slopes.
It forms a much-branched shrub 1-3 m tall, the young twigs reddish, bristly or shortly setose. The leaves are alternate, coriaceous, elliptic to lanceolate, 5-12 cm long, with a serrulate-glandular margin, acuminate apex and conspicuously reticulate venation, aromatic when crushed. Inflorescences are axillary or terminal racemes bearing numerous small, urceolate (urn-shaped) white to pinkish corollas about 4-6 mm long, the calyx persistent and accrescent. The fruit is a depressed-globose capsule enclosed by the swollen, fleshy, bluish-purple calyx, forming a berry-like false fruit, dispersed by birds.
A member of the large genus Gaultheria (Ericaceae, subfam. Vaccinioideae), the species yields a methyl-salicylate-rich essential oil ("Indian wintergreen oil") distilled from its foliage and harvested commercially across Nepal and India. This use, with its capacity to colonise disturbed and burnt ground, makes it locally abundant and of no conservation concern. Its broad ecological amplitude and bird-dispersed fleshy fruits underlie its extensive Indo-Malesian distribution.
Author: Wall. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Nepal, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Airy Shaw revision of Asiatic Gaultheria, Middleton monograph of Gaultheria