Royle
Description
Gaultheria trichophylla is a low, mat-forming dwarf shrub of the high Himalaya, occurring across Nepal, northern India, Bhutan, Pakistan, Myanmar and southwestern China, with disjunct or introduced records from New Zealand, Canada, Chile and France; GBIF documents some 611 collections. It is a plant of open alpine and subalpine slopes, rhododendron scrub margins and humus-rich turf between about 3000 and 4500 m. The photographed material was gathered in central Nepal at Barpak (Gorkha) near 3050 m in May and in the Garhwal Himalaya at Kinkhola around 3550 m in June, on the moist, well-drained, peaty soils it favours under a cool monsoonal climate.
The plant forms compact, prostrate to ascending mats from slender, wiry, much-branched stems that are finely bristly-hairy and root at the nodes. The leaves are small, alternate, crowded, ovate to elliptic, leathery and shining, with a finely toothed, bristly-ciliate margin. Flowers are solitary in the leaf axils, the corolla urceolate to broadly campanulate, pink to pale rose, five-lobed, with a persistent calyx that becomes fleshy in fruit. The fruit is a depressed-globose capsule enclosed by the swollen, berry-like, bright blue calyx, a diagnostic generic feature aiding bird dispersal.
The genus Gaultheria (Ericaceae) is centred on eastern Asia and the Americas, and G. trichophylla belongs to a group of small-leaved alpine species in which the showy fleshy calyx replaces a true berry. Like its relatives it is calcifuge, demanding acidic substrates and forming ericoid mycorrhizal associations. It is widespread and locally abundant across its core Himalayan range and not regarded as threatened.
Author: Royle · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 14, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Pakistan, Airy Shaw and Sleumer monograph of Asiatic Gaultheria