(G.Don) Wall. ex Griseb.
Description
Gentiana venusta is a Himalayan alpine gentian ranging through India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bhutan, with about 103 documented occurrences tracing a broad arc along the high Himalaya from the western to the eastern ranges. It is a strict alpine, growing on open grassy slopes, alpine meadows, moist turf and stony pastures above the treeline, generally between roughly 3500 and 4500 m. The illustrated plant from Bagubasa in Garhwal at 4100 m, flowering in September, exemplifies its late-monsoon to early-autumn flowering, when these dwarf gentians colour the short alpine sward after the snow-fed turf has been grazed and the meadows begin to dry.
It is a small tufted annual or short-lived perennial forming low rosettes from which arise several decumbent to ascending, few-flowered stems. The leaves are small, sessile, obovate to spathulate and crowded basally, the cauline pairs more distant and lanceolate, with a narrow cartilaginous margin. The flowers are solitary or few, terminal, with a tubular calyx whose lobes are unequal, and a narrowly funnelform to club-shaped corolla that is pale blue, whitish or yellowish, often spotted within, with short erect lobes and conspicuous plicate, fimbriate to bifid intervening folds (plicae). The fruit is a stipitate, bivalved capsule containing numerous minute, smooth seeds.
The species belongs to Gentiana sect. Chondrophyllae, the large group of small-flowered annual Himalayan and Sino-Himalayan gentians, a notoriously difficult complex in which G. venusta is distinguished by floral and plical characters. The name G. venusta (G.Don) Wall. ex Griseb. is accepted. Flowering is closely tied to snowmelt and monsoon timing, and pollination is by small insects; the diminutive seeds are dispersed by wind and water. It is widespread and of least conservation concern.
Author: (G.Don) Wall. ex Griseb. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Pakistan, Flora of Nepal, Ho & Liu A Worldwide Monograph of Gentiana