(Wall.) LaFrankie
Description
Maianthemum purpureum (Wall.) LaFrankie is a montane false Solomon's-seal of the Himalaya and southwestern China, with about 673 records from China, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Myanmar and Taiwan. It grows in shaded, humus-rich situations: fir and rhododendron forest, subalpine scrub, mossy stream banks and the edges of high meadows, typically in the upper temperate to subalpine belt around 3000 to 3800 m. The plants photographed at Tsochenchen in Bhutan at 3550 m and south of Rara Lake in West Nepal at 3600 m, both in June, are typical of its cool, moist, snow-influenced woodland and forest-margin habitats.
The species is an erect rhizomatous perennial arising from a creeping, somewhat fleshy rhizome. The simple, unbranched stem bears several alternate, sessile to subsessile, ovate to elliptic leaves with conspicuous parallel venation. The inflorescence is a terminal raceme or narrow panicle of small flowers; in contrast to typical white-flowered Maianthemum, the perianth here is purple to dull reddish, with six free or shortly united tepals and six stamens. The fruit is a small globose berry that ripens red to purplish-black, each containing one to few seeds.
Long placed in Smilacina (and Tovaria), the species was transferred to a broadly circumscribed Maianthemum, which subsumes those segregate genera on molecular and morphological grounds. Its purple-flowered condition is notable within the predominantly white-flowered genus. The nectariferous flowers attract small insects, and the fleshy berries are dispersed by birds. Widespread across the Sino-Himalayan region and locally common in suitable forest, M. purpureum is not considered threatened, although it depends on the persistence of undisturbed montane woodland.
Author: (Wall.) LaFrankie · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Nepal, LaFrankie's revision of Maianthemum (incl. Smilacina)