Hook.f.
Description
Saussurea polystichoides is a high-alpine perennial herb of the eastern and central Himalaya, recorded from Nepal, northern India, Bhutan and adjacent south-western China, with a small documented base of about 43 occurrences consistent with its restricted, high-elevation habitat. It grows on open alpine turf, screes, moraines and rocky slopes, typically between roughly 4000 and 4800 m. The specimen shown was photographed near Saniti Lake in Sikkim at about 4250 m in August, when these short-season alpines flower during the brief post-monsoon window above the treeline.
The plant is a low, cushion-forming or tufted herb arising from a stout caudex clothed in old leaf bases, the name polystichoides alluding to the fern-like, many-ranked rosette of finely divided leaves. The leaves are pinnately lobed to pinnatisect, narrow and densely arranged, often white-woolly to give protection against cold and intense radiation. The capitula are sessile or shortly stalked and aggregated within the leaf rosette; each head bears tubular, purple to violet disc florets enclosed by imbricate, often lanate phyllaries. The fruit is a glabrous cypsela crowned by a feathery, plumose pappus.
Saussurea (Asteraceae, tribe Cardueae) is a large Asian genus particularly diversified in the high Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau, where many species have evolved dense indumentum or translucent bracts as adaptations to extreme alpine conditions. S. polystichoides belongs to the group of cushion- or rosette-forming saw-worts of the highest screes. Pollinated by alpine insects and wind-dispersed via its plumose pappus, it is a narrow-range, habitat-specialist endemic of conservation interest given its limited area and sensitivity to climatic warming.
Author: Hook.f. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Lipschitz monograph of Saussurea