(D.Don) Soják
Description
Argentina microphylla is a high-alpine cushion herb of the Sino-Himalayan region, documented by GBIF from Nepal, China, India, Bhutan and Pakistan across some 272 georeferenced records. It is a characteristic species of the upper alpine and subnival belt, colonising stony slopes, glacial moraines, gravelly fellfields and turf at elevations approaching the snowline. The species was photographed in West Nepal on the Kagmara-La at 4850 m and at the Baga-La-Phedi at 4250 m, both in July, the brief window when these wind-swept screes are snow-free and the plants flower.
It forms low, mat- or cushion-forming perennials arising from a stout, woody, branched caudex clothed in persistent leaf-bases. The leaves are imparipinnate and crowded into rosettes, with numerous small, closely overlapping leaflets that are densely silky-sericeous and silvery beneath, an adaptation reducing transpiration and reflecting intense montane radiation. The flowers are solitary or few, borne on short scapes, with five green sepals alternating with an epicalyx, five obovate bright-yellow petals, numerous stamens, and an apocarpous gynoecium of many free carpels seated on a slightly hairy receptacle. The fruit is an aggregate of dry, glabrous achenes.
GBIF treats the name as accepted. The genus Argentina was segregated from Potentilla by Soják, reflecting molecular evidence that the herbaceous, pinnate-leaved "argentine" potentillas form a distinct lineage; the species accordingly appears in older Himalayan floras under Potentilla microphylla. Adapted to extreme cold, short growing seasons and unstable substrates, it is not considered threatened, its wide trans-Himalayan range and remote habitat affording natural protection.
Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Nepal, Flora of China, Soják revision of Potentilla and allied genera