Franch.
Description
Gentiana maeulchanensis is a small annual or biennial gentian of the eastern Himalaya and adjacent China, known from a comparatively modest 60 records spanning China, Bhutan, India and Myanmar. It occupies open meadows, grassy banks, terraced field margins and moist disturbed ground, generally between 2000 and 3600 m, flowering early in the season before the monsoon. The illustrated plants were collected in Bhutan at Gogona (3400 m) and at Limbukha (2200 m), both in April, the latter site lying among the lower cultivated valleys where the species descends to its altitudinal minimum.
The plant is a slender, often branched herb a few centimetres to about 20 cm tall, with a basal rosette and small opposite cauline leaves that are ovate to spathulate with cartilaginous, often whitish margins. The flowers are solitary and terminal or borne in lax cymes; the calyx is tubular with a membranous keel and unequal lobes. The corolla is funnelform to campanulate, blue to pale violet, with five spreading lobes alternating with shorter, fringed or toothed plicae in the sinuses, a defining feature of the section. The capsule is exserted on a stipe at maturity and releases numerous minute seeds.
The species belongs to the predominantly annual Himalayan-Chinese assemblage of small gentians, where it is distinguished by its plical fringing and early phenology. Such early flowering exploits the brief window before competing monsoon vegetation, and the flowers are pollinated by early-emerging insects. With a restricted but stable distribution, it has not been assessed but warrants attention where its lower-elevation habitats are subject to agricultural change.
Author: Franch. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Ho & Liu monograph of Gentiana