Benth.
Description
Nepeta govaniana is a western Himalayan endemic catmint distributed through the mountains of northern India, Pakistan and adjacent China, with GBIF recording about 169 occurrences concentrated in the north-western ranges. It is a plant of the upper temperate and subalpine zone, generally between roughly 2400 and 3700 m, the photographed material coming from the Valley of Flowers in Indian Garhwal at 3350 m, still in flower in September. It grows in moist alpine and subalpine meadows, forest clearings, among shrubberies and along stream banks on cool, humus-rich soils, often in the open herb-rich grassland of the high western Himalaya.
The species is an erect, aromatic perennial herb reaching about 0.6-1 m, with simple or branched, finely pubescent quadrangular stems. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, ovate to ovate-oblong with a cordate or truncate base, acuminate apex and coarsely serrate margins, somewhat soft-hairy and pleasantly scented. Distinctively for a Nepeta, the flowers are pale yellow rather than blue or violet; they are borne in lax, often paniculate terminal cymes, the tubular calyx fifteen-nerved and two-lipped, the corolla two-lipped with a broad, notched lower lip. The fruit comprises four smooth ovoid nutlets.
Nepeta (Lamiaceae) is a large, mainly Eurasian genus, and N. govaniana is unusual in its soft yellow corollas, a feature that has made it a valued ornamental in temperate gardens. Its open, two-lipped flowers are visited and pollinated chiefly by bees. Locally frequent within its restricted western Himalayan range, it is not regarded as threatened, though its dependence on intact moist subalpine meadows links its fortunes to high-pasture land use.
Author: Benth. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Flora Simlensis, Flora of British India (Hooker), Hedge revision of Himalayan Nepeta, Harley et al. Labiatae (Kubitzki, The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants)