Tag:

Bhutan

Flowers of Bhutan — 1326 plant species documented across the Bhutanese Himalaya, from dense broadleaf and conifer forests to alpine scrub and meadows. Bhutan’s largely intact wilderness shelters an exceptional diversity of orchids, rhododendrons, primulas and Himalayan poppies, many of them regional endemics. Each species page includes a botanical description, distribution, habitat and flowering time, with the original photograph and its recorded altitude and locality.

Rutaceae

Murraya koenigii

by G & P Jürgens

(L.) Spreng.

Bhutan2014 150
Bhutan Trashigang 2000m, May
Bhutan2014 236
Bhutan Trashigang 2000m, May

Description

Murraya koenigii, the curry-leaf tree, is native to the Indian subcontinent and Indo-China and is now pantropically cultivated and naturalised, reflected in its very wide GBIF distribution spanning India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Southeast Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas. In its native range it grows in subtropical deciduous and semi-evergreen forest, scrub, forest margins and as an escape near settlements, from the plains up to about 1600 m, occasionally higher. The photographed plant from Trashigang in eastern Bhutan, at roughly 2000 m and flowering in May, sits near the upper limit of its altitudinal range in warm, sheltered hill forest.

The species is a small, aromatic, much-branched shrub or tree with thin grey to brownish bark. The leaves are alternate, imparipinnate, with numerous ovate-lanceolate, oblique-based, crenulate leaflets that are strongly aromatic when crushed and gland-dotted, as throughout the Rutaceae. The flowers are borne in terminal corymbose panicles, small, white, fragrant and bisexual, with five petals, ten stamens and a superior ovary. The fruit is a small ellipsoid to ovoid berry ripening from green through red to glossy black, with thin sweetish pulp and usually one or two seeds; the seeds are notably recalcitrant.

The genus commemorates the Swedish physician J. A. Murray, and the species epithet honours Johann Gerhard König. The plant is of great economic and culinary importance, its leaves indispensable in South Asian cuisine, and it is widely valued in traditional medicine. Its gland-dotted, essential-oil-rich foliage typifies the Rutaceae, and bird-dispersed berries account for its frequent escape and naturalisation; it is abundant and of no conservation concern.

Author: (L.) Spreng. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 11, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 1, Flora of Nepal, A Monograph of the Genus Murraya (Rutaceae)

Rubiaceae

Mussaenda glabra

by GP Jürgens

Vahl

Bh09 388 P615
Bhutan Punaka-Chju 1600m, June
Nepal 2001 469 ergebnis ergebnis scaled
Nepal (Gorkha) Gunda 1700m, May
Nepal 2001 468 ergebnis ergebnis
Nepal (Gorkha) Gunda 1700m, May

Description

Mussaenda glabra is a widely distributed tropical to subtropical shrub or scrambling liana of Southeast Asia and the eastern Himalaya, documented from numerous countries including India, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Nepal across some 355 GBIF occurrences. The illustrated material was gathered at Punaka-Chu in Bhutan at 1600 m in June and at Gunda in Gorkha, Nepal at 1700 m in May. It grows in moist broad-leaved forest, along streamsides, thickets and forest margins from the lowlands up to about 1800 m, thriving in warm, humid, partly shaded situations.

It is an evergreen shrub or woody climber with terete, often pubescent young branches. The leaves are opposite, ovate to elliptic, entire, acuminate at the apex, with interpetiolar stipules characteristic of the Rubiaceae. The inflorescence is a terminal cyme bearing tubular flowers with a five-lobed orange-yellow corolla; the diagnostic feature is the enlargement of a single calyx lobe in some flowers into a large, conspicuous, white, leaf-like petaloid bract (semaphyll) that advertises the inflorescence to pollinators. The fruit is a fleshy berry containing numerous minute seeds.

The genus Mussaenda is renowned for these showy expanded calyx lobes, an adaptation enhancing pollinator attraction in the shaded understory and a feature widely exploited in horticulture. The fleshy berries are dispersed by birds. With its broad range spanning continental and insular Asia, the species is of least concern, being common across much of its distribution, though dependent on the persistence of intact lowland and submontane forest.

Author: Vahl · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Nepal, Jayaweera – The Genus Mussaenda (Rubiaceae) revision

Rubiaceae

Mussaenda roxburghii

by G & P Jürgens

Hook.f.

Bhutan2014 279
Bhutan Trithangebe near a farmhouse 700m, May
Bhutan2014 281
Bhutan Trithangebe near a farmhouse 700m, May
Bhutan2014 282
Bhutan Trithangebe near a farmhouse 700m, May

Description

Mussaenda roxburghii is a shrub of the eastern Himalayan and Indo-Burmese lowlands and foothills, ranging across India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar; GBIF logs some 145 occurrences including a few cultivated records farther afield. It grows in warm subtropical hill forest, along forest margins, stream banks, roadside thickets and clearings, generally from near sea level to about 1500 m. The photographed individual grows in Bhutan at Trithangebe beside a farmhouse at around 700 m in May, a typical habitat for this species, which thrives in the humid pre-monsoon warmth of the lower hills near villages.

The species is an erect to scrambling shrub with terete, finely pubescent young branches. The leaves are opposite, ovate to elliptic, acuminate, entire and softly hairy beneath, with interpetiolar stipules. The inflorescence is a terminal corymbose cyme of numerous small flowers; its most striking feature is the enlargement of a single calyx lobe of certain flowers into a large, white, leaf-like petaloid bract advertising the inflorescence. The fertile flowers have a narrowly tubular orange to yellow corolla with five spreading lobes and a hairy throat. The fruit is a small fleshy berry crowned by the persistent calyx and containing minute seeds.

Mussaenda roxburghii Hook.f. exemplifies the genus's showy semaphylls, the expanded white calyx lobes that aid pollinator attraction and recur across tropical Rubiaceae. Widespread and locally common through the Indo-Himalayan foothills, it is not regarded as threatened and persists in secondary vegetation. Related Himalayan congeners such as M. treutleri are sometimes confused with it, and the group remains a focus of regional taxonomic study.

Author: Hook.f. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of British India, taxonomic revisions of Mussaenda (Rubiaceae)

Orchideaceae

Mycaranthes floribunda

by GP Jürgens

(D.Don) S.C.Chen & J.J.Wood

Nepal 97 408 P789
Nepal Tashigaon 3000m May

Description

Mycaranthes floribunda is a widespread epiphytic orchid of tropical and subtropical Asia, recorded from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China. With some 182 georeferenced collections in GBIF, it is among the more frequently encountered species of its genus. In the eastern Himalaya it ascends into the temperate zone, as shown by material gathered near Tashigaon in eastern Nepal at around 3000 m in May. It grows chiefly as an epiphyte on the trunks and boughs of trees in humid broad-leaved and mixed evergreen forest, favouring mossy, shaded situations with reliable atmospheric moisture, and occasionally occurs lithophytically on shaded rock.

The plant forms clustered, slender, cane-like pseudostems arising from a short rhizome and clothed in persistent leaf bases. The leaves are several, distichous, narrowly elliptic to lanceolate, coriaceous and acute, articulated to sheathing bases. Inflorescences are lateral or terminal, erect to arching racemes bearing numerous small, densely arranged flowers, the axis and ovaries often furnished with fine mealy or hairy indument. The flowers are pale, the sepals ovate-lanceolate with a short mentum formed at the column foot, the petals narrower, and the trilobed labellum bearing low keels or calli on the disc. The fruit is a small ellipsoid capsule.

The species was originally described by D. Don and was transferred to Mycaranthes by S.C. Chen and J.J. Wood, reflecting the segregation of this lineage from the broadly circumscribed genus Eria, a realignment supported by molecular phylogenetic analyses of the Eriinae. Its wide elevational and geographic amplitude and tolerance of disturbed forest margins render it relatively secure across much of its range, though continuing deforestation locally reduces suitable epiphytic habitat.

Author: (D.Don) S.C.Chen & J.J.Wood · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Genera Orchidacearum

Asteraceae

Myriactis nepalensis 

by G & P Jürgens

Less.

Garw 2005 77
India Garhwal Auli-Gaushon 3100m, October

Description

Myriactis nepalensis is an annual or short-lived perennial herb in the daisy family, widespread across the Himalayas from Pakistan through Nepal, India (Sikkim, Garhwal), and Bhutan to southwest China. It thrives in moist forest margins, shady banks, and disturbed ground at 1,500–3,500 m elevation.

The plant grows 15–60 cm tall with erect, branching stems. Leaves are alternate, ovate to broadly lanceolate, coarsely toothed, and softly hairy. The small flower heads (5–8 mm across) are borne in loose terminal clusters, with white ray florets surrounding yellow disc florets. Flowering occurs from August to November.

Often overlooked due to its small flower heads, Myriactis nepalensis plays an important ecological role as a late-season nectar source for pollinators at high elevations.

Author: Less. · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of Nepal Checklist, GBIF

Tamaricaceae

Myricaria albiflora

by G & P Jürgens

Grierson & D.G. Long

Bhutan2012 206
Bhutan Haa-valley 3000m, September

Description

Myricaria albiflora Grierson & D.G. Long is a narrowly distributed shrub of the Tamaricaceae, known only from the eastern Himalaya in Bhutan and immediately adjacent India, where GBIF holds just 13 georeferenced records, underscoring its restricted range and rarity. Like other members of the genus it is a riparian specialist, colonising open gravel and shingle bars, sandy braided riverbeds, moraine and the stony margins of high mountain streams, habitats that are periodically disturbed by flooding and ice. The photographed plant from the Haa valley in western Bhutan at about 3,000 m in September lies within its subalpine river-valley habitat, where it flowers and fruits in the latter part of the growing season.

It is a low, much-branched deciduous shrub with slender reddish wand-like branchlets densely clothed in small, sessile, scale-like to narrowly lanceolate leaves arranged in spirals, giving the twigs a tamarisk-like, heath-like aspect. The flowers are borne in dense terminal racemes; each has five sepals and, distinctively for this species, five white (rather than the usual pink to purplish) petals, with the filaments of the stamens connate below into a tube. The superior ovary matures into a slender three-valved capsule releasing numerous minute seeds tipped with a tuft of long white hairs (a coma) that aids wind dispersal.

The genus Myricaria comprises riverine shrubs of Eurasian mountains closely allied to Tamarix, distinguished by their partly fused stamens and comose seeds. M. albiflora was described as a Bhutanese endemic for the Flora of Bhutan and is defined chiefly by its white flowers. Given its very small known range and dependence on dynamic riverine habitats vulnerable to hydrological change, dam construction and gravel extraction, it warrants careful monitoring, though it has not been formally assessed.

Author: Grierson & D.G. Long · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of China Vol. 13, GBIF, Zhang & Zhang: Revision of Myricaria (Tamaricaceae) (2003)

Tamaricaceae

Myricaria rosea

by G & P Jürgens

W.W. Sm.

Sikkim2011 227
Sikkim Yumthang-Chu 3600m, September
Sikkim2004 285 P498
Sikkim/India Dzongri 3900m May

Description

Myricaria rosea W.W.Sm. is a tamarisk-like shrub of the Tamaricaceae native to the eastern and central Himalaya and adjacent China. GBIF records, numbering 268 occurrences, place it in China, Nepal, India, Bhutan and Myanmar. The species is a riparian specialist of high-altitude valleys, colonising gravel bars, glacial outwash, moraine and the sandy margins of mountain streams, generally between 3,300 and 4,300 m. The illustrated plants from the Yumthang-Chu in Sikkim at 3,600 m in September and from Dzongri at 3,900 m in May span its flowering and fruiting seasons in the alpine and subalpine riverine zone.

The plant is a low, much-branched, decumbent to erect shrub with slender, reddish-brown, flexible branchlets. The leaves are small, sessile, scale-like to narrowly lanceolate, glaucous and densely overlapping along the twigs, an adaptation to the dry, exposed habitat. The flowers are borne in dense, terminal, spike-like racemes; each has five rose-pink to purplish petals, a five-parted calyx, and ten stamens whose filaments are connate at the base into a tube, a key character separating Myricaria from the related Tamarix. The fruit is a narrowly conical capsule splitting into three valves to release numerous tiny seeds, each crowned with a tuft of long, basally awned hairs that aids wind and water dispersal.

Myricaria comprises a small group of Central Asian and Sino-Himalayan shrubs of disturbed, unstable riparian and glacial substrates, and M. rosea is one of the distinctly pink-flowered eastern Himalayan members. Ecologically these shrubs are important pioneer colonisers that stabilise braided river gravels and moraine, providing early successional cover; their dependence on natural flood and sediment regimes makes them sensitive to hydrological alteration of high mountain rivers.

Author: W.W. Sm. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 13, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, Zhang & Zhang: A taxonomic revision of Myricaria (Tamaricaceae)

Asteraceae

Nannoglottis hookeri

by GP Jürgens

(Clarke ex Hook.f.) Kitam.

Bhutan2015 74
Bhutan Wangdi 1400m, October
Sikkim2011 73
Sikkim Tanghu 4000m, June
Bh09 25 G46
Bhutan Chele-La, 3500m June

Description

Nannoglottis hookeri is a Himalayan and Sino-Himalayan species recorded from Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, India and south-western China, GBIF logging about 145 occurrences across this arc. It inhabits a notably broad altitudinal span, from warm-temperate forest understorey and shrubby slopes to high subalpine and alpine meadows. The cited gatherings illustrate this amplitude: Wangdi in Bhutan at only 1400 m in October, Tanghu in Sikkim near 4000 m in June, and the Chele-La pass at around 3500 m in June. Such occurrence in moist, partly shaded ground, on humus-rich soils among rocks and along forest margins, characterises the species through the Eastern Himalayan ranges.

It is a perennial herb growing from a stout woody rhizome and producing erect, leafy, glandular-pubescent stems. The leaves are alternate, the lower ones petiolate with ovate to elliptic, coarsely toothed blades, becoming sessile and amplexicaul above; both surfaces bear scattered hairs. The capitula are radiate and arranged in a loose terminal corymb; the involucre is hemispheric with subequal, herbaceous phyllaries in few rows. Ray florets are yellow, ligulate and female, while the disc florets are tubular, yellow and bisexual. The cypselae are oblong and ribbed, surmounted by a pappus of slender barbellate bristles, an arrangement linking the genus to the Astereae.

Nannoglottis (Astereae) is a small Sino-Himalayan genus of fewer than a dozen species, distinguished by its radiate heads and montane forest ecology, and molecular work places it near the base of the tribe, making it of phylogenetic interest. Named for J. D. Hooker, N. hookeri is treated as an accepted species. Its dependence on cool, moist montane habitat and relatively narrow distribution warrant attention, though no formal threat status has been assigned; populations appear stable where forest cover persists.

Author: (Clarke ex Hook.f.) Kitam. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Gao's systematic study of Nannoglottis (Astereae)

Caprifoliaceae

Nardostachys jatamansi

by GP Jürgens

(D.Don) DC.

BhutanPG2011 707 01 01
Bhutan Chele-La, 3850m July
Sikkim2003 195 P273
Sikkim Dzongri 4000m 08.2003
Nepal 99 283 ergebnis
Nepal Loccu 3155m, May
Nepal 99 366 ergebnis
Nepal Loccu 3155m, May
Nepal 99 822 ergebnis
West-Nepal Baga-La-Phedi 4200m, July

Description

Nardostachys jatamansi, the source of the aromatic drug spikenard, is an alpine herb of the high Himalaya and the Tibetan plateau margins. GBIF records confirm its native distribution across China, Nepal, India, Bhutan and Myanmar, with cultivated or processed material recorded from several other countries, totalling around 1110 occurrences. It grows on open alpine meadows, rocky slopes, grassy ledges and stable scree, generally between about 3000 and 5000 m, in the cool, summer-moist conditions of the high mountains. The photographed collections span its range and altitude well, from the Chele-La in Bhutan at 3850 m and Dzongri in Sikkim at 4000 m to Loccu in Nepal at 3155 m and the Baga-La-Phedi in West Nepal at 4200 m, recorded from May to August during the alpine flowering season.

It is a small, erect perennial herb arising from a stout, woody, aromatic rhizome densely clothed in the fibrous remains of old leaf-bases. The leaves are mostly basal, elongate-spathulate to oblong, entire and somewhat fleshy. The flowering stem bears a compact terminal cyme or head of small flowers; each has a campanulate, pink to pale rose corolla with five lobes, four stamens and an inferior ovary. The fruit is a small, one-seeded achene crowned by the persistent calyx.

Nardostachys is here placed in the Caprifoliaceae, into which the former valerian family Valerianaceae is now subsumed. The species is of great economic and cultural importance, its fragrant rhizome being the jatamansi or spikenard of ancient commerce, still harvested for essential oils, perfumery and traditional medicine. Intensive wild collection coupled with its restricted alpine habitat has led to serious population decline, and the species is assessed as Critically Endangered and listed under CITES Appendix II.

Author: (D.Don) DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Nepal, Flora of China (Valerianaceae/Caprifoliaceae), Medicinal Plants of the Himalaya (Polunin & Stainton)

Brassicaceae

Nasturtium officinale

by G & P Jürgens

R.Br.

Bhutan2014 845
Bhutan Thimphu 2500m, May
Bh09 253 G421
Bhutan Phobjika, 2900m June

Description

Nasturtium officinale R.Br., the common watercress, is a cosmopolitan aquatic to semi-aquatic perennial native to Europe and western Asia but now naturalised almost worldwide, as the GBIF total of over 150,000 occurrences across the United Kingdom, France, Iberia, central Europe, North and Central America, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and beyond attests. It grows in clean, slow-flowing or still fresh water: streams, ditches, springs, flushes and the muddy margins of ponds, typically on base-rich substrates. In the Himalaya it occurs as an established member of the aquatic flora, the illustrated plants having been recorded at Thimphu in Bhutan at 2500 m in May and at Phobjika at 2900 m in June, where it colonises cool montane watercourses and irrigation channels.

The plant is a glabrous, succulent perennial with hollow, ascending to procumbent stems that root freely at the lower nodes and often float. The leaves are pinnately compound with one to several pairs of ovate to oblong lateral leaflets and a larger, rounded, often cordate terminal leaflet, the margins entire to sinuate. The inflorescence is a terminal raceme of small white flowers, each with four sepals, four clawed white petals arranged in the cruciform pattern typical of the mustard family, and six tetradynamous stamens with yellow anthers. The fruit is a slender, slightly curved cylindrical silique borne on a spreading pedicel, containing two rows of small reticulate seeds in each locule.

Long cultivated as a leaf vegetable for its peppery, vitamin-rich foliage, watercress has been carried far beyond its natural range and is a frequent naturalised escape. It hybridises with the related Nasturtium microphyllum to form the sterile N. × sterile, and the genus is now firmly distinguished from the unrelated garden "nasturtium" (Tropaeolum). Ecologically it is a bioindicator of relatively unpolluted, well-oxygenated water and provides cover and food for aquatic invertebrates. Globally it is of least concern; indeed in some regions it behaves as an aggressive coloniser of waterways rather than a species at risk.

Author: R.Br. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora Europaea, Brassicaceae of the World (Al-Shehbaz)