(Wall. ex DC.) C.Shih
Description
Stenoseris graciliflora is a slender herbaceous composite of the temperate to subalpine Himalaya, ranging through China, India, Nepal, Myanmar and Bhutan, with 160 GBIF records tracing its distribution along the moist montane forest belt and adjoining clearings. It typically grows in forest margins, shrubberies and grassy openings on humus-rich soils between roughly 2500 and 3800 m. The illustrated plant was collected near Wangdi in western Bhutan at about 3300 m in June, in the upper temperate zone where the monsoon supports a tall-herb flora amid fir and rhododendron forest.
In GBIF the name is treated as a synonym, with Stenoseris graciliflora maintained as the accepted name for this entity. The plant is an erect perennial with slender, often leafy and branching stems exuding milky latex when broken, as is typical of the lettuce tribe. The leaves are thin, the lower ones often lyrate-pinnatifid and narrowing to a winged petiole, the upper smaller and clasping. The inflorescence is a lax, narrow panicle of small, few-flowered capitula, each enclosed by a cylindrical involucre of imbricate phyllaries; the florets are all ligulate and pale blue to lilac. The fruit is a flattened, ribbed cypsela bearing a soft white pappus of fine bristles.
Stenoseris is a small genus of the tribe Cichorieae (Lactuceae), segregated from Cicerbita and Lactuca on the basis of its slender capitula, achene morphology and pappus characters. The basionym authority (Wall. ex DC.) C.Shih reflects the species' long taxonomic passage among these closely allied genera. As a widespread montane herb it is not regarded as threatened, though it serves as a useful indicator of intact, humid temperate forest understorey.
Author: (Wall. ex DC.) C.Shih · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Compositae of the Himalaya (Cichorieae monographs)