Tag:

Autumn

Caprifoliaceae

Triplostegia glandulifera

by GP Jürgens

Wall. ex DC.

Bhutan2015 26
Bhutan Dochu-La 3100m, October

Description

Triplostegia glandulifera is a slender montane herb broadly distributed through the Sino-Himalaya and into Malesia, ranging from Nepal, northern India and Bhutan eastward across China and Taiwan to Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Guinea, with outliers in Japan. GBIF documents over 1500 occurrences, concentrated in China, Taiwan and the Himalayan countries. It grows in moist temperate forest, on shaded grassy banks, in clearings and along forest margins on humus-rich soils, broadly between about 2000 and 3500 m. The plant illustrated was photographed in Bhutan at the Dochu-La at 3100 m in October, in cool, misty broad-leaved and conifer forest typical of its autumn fruiting.

The plant is a delicate, erect perennial herb with slender, four-angled stems that are glandular-pubescent above. The leaves are opposite, the lower ones often lyrate-pinnatifid and the upper smaller and less divided, with toothed segments. The inflorescence is a lax, dichotomously branched cyme bearing small, regular, five-lobed white to pinkish flowers. Diagnostically, each ovary is enclosed in a double involucel of bracteoles densely covered with stalked, hooked glandular hairs, which persists around the single-seeded fruit and aids epizoochorous dispersal.

The genus Triplostegia comprises only a couple of species and has had an unsettled placement, treated variously within Dipsacaceae, Valerianaceae or its own family Triplostegiaceae; molecular phylogenetics now situates it within an enlarged Caprifoliaceae (the dipsacalean clade), as a sister lineage to the teasels and valerians. Its glandular double involucel is a key character linking it to that alliance. The species is widespread and ecologically unremarkable in distribution, and is not considered of conservation concern.

Author: Wall. ex DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, An Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Phylogeny and Classification of Dipsacales (Caprifoliaceae s.l.)

Gentianaceae

Tripterospermum nigrobaccatum

by GP Jürgens

H.Hara

Bhutan2015 23
Bhutan Dochu-La 3000m, October
Bhutan2015 25
Bhutan Dochu-La 3000m, October

Description

Tripterospermum nigrobaccatum is an eastern Himalayan twining gentian recorded from Nepal, Bhutan and India, and is among the least-collected taxa in this set with only about 11 GBIF occurrences. It is a forest plant of the temperate zone, scrambling through shaded broadleaved and mixed forest, shrubby margins and mossy banks, broadly between about 2500 and 3500 m. The photograph from the Dochu-La in Bhutan at 3000 m in October reflects its autumn flowering and fruiting, when this well-known forested pass carries a rich understorey flora in the cooling post-monsoon months.

Unlike the erect alpine gentians, it is a slender, herbaceous perennial climber or trailer with twining stems. The leaves are opposite, ovate to lanceolate, acuminate and three- to five-veined, borne on a vine-like stem. The flowers are solitary or few in the leaf axils, with a campanulate to narrowly funnel-shaped corolla that is blue to purplish, the five lobes alternating with small plicate folds in the sinuses as is typical of the Gentianeae. Most diagnostic is the fruit: rather than a dry capsule, Tripterospermum produces a fleshy berry, here ripening black or blackish (the meaning of "nigrobaccatum"), containing flattened, often winged seeds.

The genus Tripterospermum was segregated from Crawfurdia and Gentiana on the basis of its climbing habit, baccate fruit and three-winged or angled seeds, and is centred on East and Southeast Asia. The fleshy fruits suggest at least partial bird dispersal, contrasting with the wind-dispersed capsules of most gentians. Its narrow range and few records make it a plant of biogeographic note, though no formal conservation assessment is established.

Author: H.Hara · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Gentianaceae of the World (Ho & Pringle / Struwe)

Malvaceae

Triumfetta annua

by G & P Jürgens

L.

Bhutan2015 280
Bhutan Zhemgang 1000m, October

Description

Triumfetta annua L. is a widespread herb of the Old World tropics and subtropics, with a pantropical distribution that GBIF records across tropical Africa (from Ethiopia and Tanzania to Angola, Zambia and South Africa), Madagascar, and southern and southeastern Asia, including China, Nepal, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. In the Himalaya it is a plant of disturbed ground, forest clearings, roadsides, field margins and warm broad-leaved forest, ascending from the lowlands to around 1,500–2,000 m. The October record from Zhemgang in central Bhutan at 1,000 m typifies its occurrence as a seasonal weed of cultivated and ruderal subtropical habitats.

The species is an erect, branching annual herb up to about 1–1.5 m tall, with stems sparsely covered in stellate or simple hairs. The leaves are alternate, long-petiolate, ovate in outline and frequently three- to five-lobed, with serrate margins, an acuminate apex and palmate venation. Small yellow flowers are borne in leaf-opposed or axillary cymose clusters; each flower has five sepals, five petals, numerous stamens and a superior ovary. The diagnostic fruit is a globose, indehiscent capsule densely covered with hooked, glochidiate spines, a burr adapted for epizoochorous dispersal by adhering to animal fur and clothing.

Formerly placed in Tiliaceae, Triumfetta is now treated within an enlarged Malvaceae (subfamily Grewioideae). Its hooked fruits make it an effective colonist and an occasional agricultural weed across continents, while the bark yields a serviceable bast fibre used locally. The genus is taxonomically complex, and its wide ecological amplitude renders T. annua a classic example of a successful tropical synanthropic species.

Author: L. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 12, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Bayer & Kubitzki: The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants Vol. V (Malvaceae)

Fabaceae

Uraria lagopus

by GP Jürgens

DC.

Bhutan2012 520
Bhutan Wangdi 2800m, September

Description

Uraria lagopus is a perennial herb or subshrub widely distributed through the Himalaya, southern China and South and Southeast Asia, recorded from India, China, Nepal, Myanmar, Taiwan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Indonesia, with about 222 occurrences in GBIF. It is a plant of open grassy slopes, scrub, forest margins, roadsides and disturbed sunny ground, ranging from the lowlands into the lower montane zone. The photographed plant was collected in Bhutan near Wangdi (Wangdue) at about 2800 m in September, towards the upper end of its altitudinal range and during the post-monsoon flowering and fruiting season.

The plant produces erect to ascending stems from a woody base, clothed in spreading hairs. The leaves are pinnately compound, usually with three to several leaflets, the leaflets oblong to elliptic, entire, with prominent venation and a hairy underside; stipules are present at the nodes. The flowers are borne in dense, elongate, terminal racemes that are conspicuously shaggy with long hairs, giving the inflorescence the hare's-foot appearance recorded in the epithet lagopus. Each papilionaceous flower is small, pinkish to purplish. The fruit is a small jointed legume (loment) breaking into one-seeded segments at maturity.

Uraria belongs to the tribe Desmodieae of the Fabaceae, a group characterised by loment fruits dispersed as individual articles. Several species, including U. lagopus, are valued in traditional medicine and as fodder, and as legumes they fix atmospheric nitrogen through root-nodule symbiosis with rhizobia, contributing to soil fertility. The species is a tolerant colonist of open and disturbed habitats and is not regarded as threatened across its broad range.

Author: DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Legumes of South Asia (Kew)

Fabaceae

Uraria oblonga

by GP Jürgens

(Wall. ex Benth.) H.Ohashi & K.Ohashi

Bhutan2012 989
Bhutan Trithangebe 1050m, October
Bhutan2015 543
Bhutan Punaka 1240m, October
Bhutan2015 544
Bhutan Punaka 1240m, October

Description

Uraria oblonga is distributed across the warm-temperate and subtropical belt of mainland Asia, with georeferenced records spanning Thailand, China, India, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Bhutan and Japan; the roughly 235 documented occurrences reflect a continuous range along the southern Himalayan foothills and through Indochina. In Bhutan it has been recorded at lower montane elevations, as the accompanying images from Trithangebe at about 1050 m and Punaka at about 1240 m attest, both gathered in October at the close of the monsoon. It favours open grassland, scrub margins, forest clearings and disturbed roadsides on well-drained slopes, behaving as a light-demanding component of secondary herbaceous communities.

The plant is an erect to ascending perennial herb or subshrub arising from a woody rootstock, the stems sparingly branched and clothed in spreading hairs. Leaves are imparipinnate, typically with one to three pairs of leaflets that are oblong to elliptic-oblong, with entire margins, a reticulate venation prominent beneath, and stipels at the base of the petiolules. The inflorescence is an elongate terminal raceme bearing numerous small papilionaceous flowers, the calyx deeply lobed with elongate teeth and the corolla pink to purplish. The fruit is a small lomentum breaking into several folded, indehiscent one-seeded articles characteristic of the genus.

The species belongs to tribe Desmodieae of the Fabaceae (Faboideae), allied to Desmodium, a relationship echoed in the synonymy and the herbarium history of the basionym described by Wallich and Bentham before transfer by H. Ohashi and K. Ohashi. The jointed, hook-haired lomentum promotes epizoochorous dispersal, while the legume root nodules fix atmospheric nitrogen, allowing the plant to colonise nutrient-poor disturbed ground. With its broad transcontinental range and tolerance of human-modified habitats, U. oblonga is not considered threatened.

Author: (Wall. ex Benth.) H.Ohashi & K.Ohashi · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Ohashi revision of Desmodieae (Leguminosae)

Malvaceae

Urena lobata

by GP Jürgens

L.

Bhutan2012 458
Bhutan Zhemgang 1200m, October

Description

Urena lobata is a pantropical subshrub of remarkably wide distribution, with GBIF recording over 31000 occurrences spanning the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia, including the United States, Brazil, China, Australia, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines and many other countries. A vigorous colonist of open, disturbed and seasonally moist ground, it grows along roadsides, in waste places, fallow fields, forest margins and grassland, mostly at low to middle elevations. The plant photographed at Zhemgang in southern Bhutan at about 1200 m, in October, occupies the warm subtropical foothill habitat where it is a common weed of cleared and cultivated land.

The plant is an erect, woody-based perennial herb or subshrub clothed throughout in stellate, often stinging-rough hairs. The leaves are alternate, variable, the lower ones rounded and shallowly three- to five-lobed or angled, the upper narrower, with toothed margins and conspicuous nectaries on the principal veins beneath. The flowers are solitary or clustered in the leaf axils, with an epicalyx of five bracteoles, five free pink to rose petals, and the stamens united into a staminal column typical of the Malvaceae. The fruit is a depressed schizocarp splitting into five indehiscent mericarps, each densely covered in glochidiate (hooked) spines that cling to fur and clothing, ensuring epizoochorous dispersal.

Urena lobata is economically significant as a bast-fibre plant, cultivated and gathered as "Congo jute" or "aramina", and the hooked fruits make it both an effective long-distance disperser and an aggressive weed in many warm regions, where it is sometimes regarded as invasive. Its enormous global range and tolerance of disturbance place it well outside any conservation concern. The species exemplifies a successful pantropical weed whose burr-like fruits have carried it, often with human aid, across the tropics and subtropics of both hemispheres.

Author: L. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Tropical East Africa (Malvaceae), Borssum Waalkes revision of Malesian Malvaceae

Adoxaceae

Viburnum cylindricum

by GP Jürgens

Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don

Bhutan2012 525
Bhutan Wangdi 2400m, September

Description

Viburnum cylindricum is a widespread evergreen or semi-evergreen shrub to small tree of the Sino-Himalayan and Indochinese region, exceptionally well documented with over 5700 GBIF occurrences spanning China, Nepal, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Bhutan, Vietnam, Laos and beyond, together with numerous cultivated and introduced records in Europe, North America and elsewhere reflecting its horticultural use. It grows in open forests, thickets, forest margins and scrub on hill slopes, typically between 1000 and 3000 m. The plant photographed near Wangdi in Bhutan at about 2400 m in September occupies this mid-montane belt, flowering and fruiting in the post-monsoon period within the warm-temperate broad-leaved forest zone of the eastern Himalaya.

It is an erect, glabrous-twigged shrub or small tree reaching several metres, immediately recognisable by its leathery, glaucous leaves whose surface bears a waxy bloom that can be marked or written upon. The leaves are opposite, simple, elliptic to oblong, entire or obscurely toothed towards the apex, and often somewhat blue-grey beneath. The inflorescence is a large, flat-topped to slightly domed terminal compound cyme of small white to pinkish-white flowers, each with a five-lobed campanulate to tubular corolla and long-exserted stamens that give the open umbel a delicate, brush-like appearance. The fruit is a small ovoid to ellipsoid drupe ripening from red to blue-black, containing a single compressed stone and dispersed by birds.

Viburnum is now placed in Adoxaceae following molecular phylogenetic revision of the old Caprifoliaceae, and V. cylindricum belongs to section Megalotinus, a predominantly tropical to subtropical Asian assemblage. The waxy, exserted-stamened flowers and bird-dispersed drupes are typical of the section. The species is locally used in traditional medicine, and the leaf wax has been put to minor practical uses. Owing to its very broad geographic and altitudinal range and tolerance of disturbed habitat it is of no conservation concern, ranking among the most frequently encountered viburnums of the eastern Himalaya and southwestern China.

Author: Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 19, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, Kern Revision of Viburnum sect. Megalotinus

Thymelaeaceae

Wikstroemia canescens

by G & P Jürgens

Meisn.

Nepal 99 57 ergebnis
West-Nepal Nyor Gaad 2700m, June
Nepal 99 935 ergebnis 1
West-Nepal Suli-Khola 2700m, July
Nepal 99 933 ergebnis
West-Nepal Ski-Khola 2700m, July
Garw 2005 236 ergebnis ergebnis
India Garhwal Guni 2350m, September

Description

Wikstroemia canescens (Meisn.) is a Himalayan to East Asian shrub of the family Thymelaeaceae, distributed from Pakistan and the northwest Himalaya through India, Nepal and Myanmar to China, Sri Lanka and Japan. The fewer than 600 GBIF records indicate a scattered but characteristically montane occurrence. It inhabits open slopes, forest margins, scrubland and rocky banks in the temperate zone, generally between 1,500 and 3,000 m. The several West Nepal localities at around 2,700 m, recorded from June through July, together with the Garhwal collection from Guni at 2,350 m in September, span its full flowering and fruiting season across the central and western Himalaya.

The plant is an erect, branching shrub up to about 2 m tall, with tough, fibrous bark and young branchlets covered in a fine greyish pubescence, hence the epithet canescens. The leaves are subopposite to alternate, shortly petiolate, elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, entire-margined and somewhat silky beneath. The small, tubular flowers lack petals and consist of a yellow to greenish-yellow, four-lobed calyx tube; they are clustered in short, terminal, head-like or umbellate inflorescences. The fruit is a small, dry to fleshy drupe.

Like many Thymelaeaceae, Wikstroemia canescens possesses an exceptionally strong inner bark rich in long fibres, and in the Himalaya it is used locally for cordage and in the traditional manufacture of hand-made paper, a use shared with the related Daphne species. The genus is closely allied to Daphne, the two differing chiefly in floral merosity and indumentum, and generic boundaries within the group remain debated. The species is widespread and not currently considered threatened.

Author: Meisn. · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of Nepal, GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 13, Halda: The Genus Daphne and allied Thymelaeaceae (2001)

Asteraceae

Youngia racemifera

by GP Jürgens

(Hook.f.) Babc. & Stebbins

Bhutan2015 494
Bhutan Phobjika 2620m, October
Bhutan2012 173
Bhutan Haar-Valley, 3200m September

Description

Youngia racemifera is a Sino-Himalayan species recorded from China, Nepal, Bhutan, India and Myanmar, GBIF holding around 209 occurrences across this eastern montane range. It is a plant of open temperate to subalpine habitats, growing on grassy and shrubby slopes, forest clearings, banks and disturbed ground where light is abundant and soils are moist but well drained. The cited localities, Phobjika in central Bhutan at 2620 m in October and the Haar Valley in the west at 3200 m in September, place it in the upper temperate to subalpine belt, flowering and fruiting through the late summer and autumn as the monsoon wanes and the high valleys cool.

It is an erect perennial or biennial herb with a leafy, branching, glabrous to sparsely hairy stem exuding milky latex when broken, as is typical of the tribe. The lower leaves are oblanceolate and runcinate-pinnatifid to lyrate, narrowed to a winged base, the upper leaves smaller and less divided, sometimes amplexicaul. The numerous small capitula are arranged in an elongate, racemose to paniculate synflorescence, reflected in the epithet. Each head is homogamous and ligulate, containing several yellow ray florets only; the involucre is cylindric with a single main row of phyllaries and small outer bracts. The cypselae are narrowly fusiform and ribbed, surmounted by a pappus of soft white barbellate bristles.

Youngia (tribe Cichorieae) is a genus of around thirty species centred on East Asia and the Himalaya, distinguished from related lettuce-like genera by its small few-flowered capitula and beakless ribbed cypselae. Based on a Hooker name and transferred by Babcock and Stebbins in their classic study of the group, Y. racemifera is treated as accepted. Its bright yellow ligulate heads attract small bees and flies. As a tolerant plant of open and disturbed montane habitats, it is widespread and of no conservation concern.

Author: (Hook.f.) Babc. & Stebbins · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Babcock & Stebbins' monograph of Crepidinae (Youngia)

Amaryllidaceae

Zephyranthes candida

by G & P Jürgens

(Lindl.) Herb.

Bhutan2012 1104
Bhutan Khoma 950m, October

Description

Zephyranthes candida is native to the marshlands and riverbanks of the Río de la Plata region in Argentina and Uruguay, but has become one of the most widely naturalised bulbous plants in tropical and subtropical Asia, Africa, and Oceania. GBIF documents over 2,810 occurrences spanning more than 20 countries, with substantial records from the United States, Japan, India, China, and Australia. In the eastern Himalayas, it occurs as a naturalised garden escape in warm valleys and lowland settlements at elevations below 1,500 m. At Khoma in eastern Bhutan at 950 m, it grows along roadsides, field margins, and around homesteads, flowering abundantly in October during the late monsoon and post-monsoon period.
Zephyranthes candida is a bulbous perennial herb. The bulb is ovoid, 2–3 cm in diameter, with a dark brown tunic. Leaves are basal, linear, rushlike, 15–30 cm long and 2–4 mm wide, dark green, semi-erect, and persistent through much of the year. The scape is slender, hollow, 15–25 cm tall, bearing a single erect flower subtended by a tubular spathe. The flower is actinomorphic, crocus-like, 3–5 cm across, with six white tepals that are broadly elliptic and slightly tinged green at the base externally. Stamens are six, subequal, with yellow anthers. The ovary is inferior, trilocular; the fruit is a depressed-globose capsule containing flattened black seeds.
Despite its alien origin, Zephyranthes candida has become thoroughly established across warm regions of the Himalayan foothills and is now a familiar element of the naturalised flora of Bhutan, Nepal, and northeast India. Its rapid vegetative spread via daughter bulbs, tolerance of a wide range of soil moisture conditions, and prolific seed production contribute to its success as a coloniser of disturbed habitats. The species is taxonomically placed in Zephyranthes sensu lato; some recent molecular treatments have subsumed it within an expanded Habranthus, though most regional Floras retain the traditional placement.

Author: (Lindl.) Herb. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 24, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 3, Meerow & Snijman: Amaryllidaceae in Kubitzki: Families and Genera of Vascular Plants Vol. 3 (1998)