Wall. ex Benth.
Description
Pedicularis furfuracea is a Himalayan louseword distributed across Nepal, northern India, Bhutan and southwestern China, with around 223 records following the southern slopes of the central and eastern Himalaya. It occupies the temperate to subalpine zone, the image documenting it on the Pele-La in Bhutan at about 2800 m in June. It grows in open forest, forest margins, subalpine scrub, grassy slopes and meadow on moist, humus-rich soils, where, like its congeners, it lives as a facultative root-hemiparasite tapping neighbouring plants for water and minerals while retaining green, photosynthetic foliage.
It is an erect perennial herb with simple or branched stems bearing alternate, pinnately divided leaves whose lobes are toothed, the whole plant often appearing scurfy or mealy, a feature reflected in the epithet furfuracea ("bran-like"). The flowers are crowded in a terminal spike or raceme; the corolla is conspicuously two-lipped and yellow to pale yellow, the galea forming an arched, beaked hood that shelters the four didynamous stamens, with a spreading three-lobed lower lip serving as a landing platform. The calyx is tubular and toothed, and the fruit is an oblique, compressed capsule containing several seeds.
Described by Wallich and Bentham, the species belongs to the immense genus Pedicularis (Orobanchaceae), a hemiparasitic lineage that has radiated spectacularly in the Sino-Himalayan mountains, producing great diversity in corolla form and beak length tied to bumblebee pollination. The yellow galeate flowers of P. furfuracea are visited by long-tongued bees, and its hemiparasitism allows it to thrive in nutrient-limited montane soils. Locally common within its elevational band, it is not considered threatened.
Author: Wall. ex Benth. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Pedicularis revision (Sino-Himalayan species, after Tsoong)