(DC.) Wall. ex Sch.Bip.
Description
Saussurea uniflora is a high-alpine thistle-relative of the eastern Himalaya, recorded in GBIF from Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and Japan across 156 occurrences. It is a plant of the upper alpine zone, occupying moist meadows, rocky slopes, screes and seepage flushes generally between 3800 and 4800 m. The photographed individual was found in Sikkim's Chopta Valley at about 4000 m in August, when the brief post-monsoon flowering peak coincides with maximum snow-melt moisture in these exposed habitats.
It is a low, tufted perennial herb arising from a stout, often woody caudex topping a thick taproot, the stem very short or almost absent so that the plant appears acaulescent. The leaves are crowded in a basal rosette, oblanceolate to elliptic, narrowed to a winged petiole, with entire or denticulate margins and a thin floccose-arachnoid indumentum. As the epithet uniflora implies, the plant typically bears a single (or few) large terminal capitulum, the involucre of imbricate, often purple-tinged phyllaries enclosing numerous purple, tubular disc florets; there are no ray florets. The fruit is a glabrous cypsela crowned by a double pappus of outer short bristles and inner plumose hairs.
Saussurea (Asteraceae, tribe Cardueae) is a vast genus centred on the mountains of Asia, many species being cushion- or rosette-forming cold-zone specialists. The reduced stem and condensed solitary head are adaptations to the short alpine growing season and high insolation, with pollination chiefly by bumblebees and flies. Although not formally evaluated for conservation, its restricted high-elevation niche makes it potentially sensitive to upward shifts in vegetation belts driven by warming.
Author: (DC.) Wall. ex Sch.Bip. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Lipschitz Monograph of the Genus Saussurea