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.

Bignoniaceae

Oroxylum indicum

by G & P Jürgens

(L.) Kurz

Bhutan2012 969
Bhutan Trithangebe 900m, October
Bhutan2015 103
Bhutan Galephug 500m, October

Description

Oroxylum indicum, the Indian trumpet tree or midnight horror, is a small deciduous tree of subtropical and tropical Asia, ranging from India, Nepal and Bhutan through Bangladesh, Myanmar and southern China to Indochina, Thailand, Sri Lanka and across Malesia to the Philippines. GBIF aggregates around 1440 occurrences. It is a tree of forest margins, secondary growth, ravines and roadsides at low to moderate elevations, often in seasonally dry monsoon forest. The Bhutanese specimens at Trithangebe (900 m) and Galephug (500 m) in October occupy this warm foothill zone, fruiting at the close of the monsoon when the great pendulous pods become conspicuous.

The tree has a sparse crown and stout, soft-wooded branches marked with prominent leaf scars. Its leaves are very large, opposite and two- to three-pinnate, often a metre or more across, with ovate, acuminate leaflets, the falling rachides littering the ground beneath. The flowers open at night in a long erect terminal raceme, each large, fleshy and campanulate, lurid reddish-purple outside and paler within, malodorous and bat-pollinated. Most striking is the fruit: a flattened, sword-shaped, sabre-like capsule up to a metre long that splits into two woody valves to release numerous flat seeds broadly winged with a papery membrane for wind dispersal.

A member of Bignoniaceae, Oroxylum is a distinctive near-monotypic genus set apart by its enormous pinnate leaves, nocturnal chiropterophilous flowers and giant samaroid pods. The species is of considerable ethnobotanical importance: its bark, seeds and young fruit are widely used in Ayurvedic and traditional medicine, and the tender pods are eaten as a vegetable. Despite localised harvesting it remains common and widespread, and is not regarded as globally threatened.

Author: (L.) Kurz · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 18, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Gentry monograph of Bignoniaceae

Poaceae

Oryza sativa

by G & P Jürgens

L.

Bhutan2015 559
Bhutan Moshu 1700m, October

Description

Oryza sativa, Asian cultivated rice, is the world's most important cereal staple and is grown across the warm-temperate to tropical zones of every inhabited continent. Domesticated in Asia from wild progenitors such as O. rufipogon, it is documented in GBIF by more than four hundred thousand occurrences spanning India, China, Southeast Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe and beyond, reflecting both its agricultural ubiquity and intensive germplasm collection. It is essentially never truly wild but rather a cultigen of flooded paddies, irrigated terraces and seasonally inundated fields, with weedy and feral forms persisting around cultivation. The plant photographed at Moshu in Bhutan at 1700 m in October represents the terraced mid-montane rice cultivation characteristic of the Bhutanese Himalaya, where hardy, often red-grained landraces are grown well above the typical lowland range and are harvested as the autumn paddies ripen to gold.

The plant is an annual (occasionally short-lived perennial) grass forming erect tufts of hollow, jointed culms typically 0.5 to 1.5 m tall, rooting at the lower nodes and tolerant of standing water. The leaves are linear, flat and scabrous, with a long membranous ligule and well-developed auricles at the junction of sheath and blade. The inflorescence is a terminal, much-branched, nodding panicle bearing numerous laterally compressed spikelets, each reduced to a single fertile floret subtended by two small sterile lemmas; the fertile lemma is keeled and may be awned or awnless. Six stamens and a feathery, two-branched stigma effect predominantly self-pollination, and the fruit is the familiar caryopsis (grain), enclosed by the persistent lemma and palea as the husk.

Oryza belongs to the grass family Poaceae, tribe Oryzeae, a lineage of marsh-adapted grasses. As a domesticate, O. sativa encompasses immense genetic diversity organised principally into the indica and japonica subspecies groups, together comprising tens of thousands of landraces and modern cultivars adapted to environments from deepwater floodplains to upland terraces. Bhutanese and Himalayan rice agriculture, often involving cold-tolerant high-altitude landraces, is of particular interest for crop genetic conservation. The species is of no conservation concern itself, but the in-situ and ex-situ preservation of its traditional landraces and of wild Oryza relatives is a recognised priority for global food security.

Author: L. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 22, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 3 Part 2, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Pakistan, Wild and Cultivated Rices (Oryza): a Taxonomic Treatment (T.T. Chang; Vaughan, The Wild Relatives of Rice)

Melastomataceae

Osbeckia capitata

by G & P Jürgens

Benth. ex Naudin

Bhutan2012 538
Bhutan Wangdi 2600m, September
Bhutan2012 539
Bhutan Wangdi 2600m, September

Description

Osbeckia capitata Benth. ex Naudin is a subshrubby herb of the eastern Himalaya, recorded by GBIF (69 occurrences) from China, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh. It occupies open grassy slopes, forest clearings, scrub margins and disturbed banks in the subtropical to lower temperate hill zone, flowering through the late monsoon. The photographed plant from Wangdue Phodrang (Wangdi) in western Bhutan at 2600 m in September is characteristic of its occurrence on warm, humid mid-elevation slopes among grasses and low shrubs.

The plant is an erect to ascending perennial herb with quadrangular, bristly stems bearing opposite, sessile to shortly petiolate leaves. The blades are ovate to lanceolate, setose on both surfaces, with the strongly arcuate three-to-five longitudinal nerves diagnostic of the family. As the epithet capitata indicates, the flowers are aggregated into dense terminal heads or capitate clusters; each flower has four pink to purple petals, a setose, urceolate hypanthium, and the typical melastomataceous androecium of curved stamens whose elongate, beaked anthers open by apical pores. The fruit is a setose urceolate capsule retained within the persistent hypanthium.

Osbeckia is a palaeotropical genus of around 50 species best developed in tropical Asia, separated from Melastoma by its smaller, dry, poricidal-anthered flowers and capsular fruits; the capitate inflorescence distinguishes O. capitata within the Himalayan members. The poricidal anthers are adapted to buzz-pollination by bees, and several congeners have local medicinal use. The species is not assessed as threatened, persisting in open and lightly disturbed montane habitats across its eastern Himalayan range.

Author: Benth. ex Naudin · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Melastomataceae of the Indian Subcontinent, Hansen monograph on Osbeckia

Melastomataceae

Osbeckia nepalensis

by GP Jürgens

Hook.

Nepal 95 22 P31 ergebnis
Nepal Darondi-Khola 630m, Octobre

Description

Osbeckia nepalensis is a subtropical to warm-temperate herb or subshrub of the eastern Himalaya and southeastern Asia, ranging through China, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia; its roughly 563 GBIF occurrences trace a broad Sino-Himalayan to Indochinese arc. In Nepal it descends to low elevations along river valleys, as recorded along the Darondi Khola at about 630 m in October, when the post-monsoon period brings peak flowering. It favours open, sunny situations on grassy hillsides, forest margins and roadside banks, behaving as an early-successional colonist of seasonally humid foothill habitats.

The plant is an erect, branched herb or soft subshrub with four-angled stems clothed, like the foliage, in stiff bristly hairs. The leaves are opposite, ovate-lanceolate, and bear the curved-parallel primary veins diagnostic of Melastomataceae. The handsome flowers are clustered in terminal heads, each with a bristly urn-shaped hypanthium and usually four broad, rounded petals of rich rose-purple to magenta; within are twice as many stamens with geniculate filaments and elongate, beaked, poricidal anthers adapted for buzz-pollination by bees. The fruit is a bristly capsule enclosed in the persistent hypanthium, releasing many minute seeds.

Osbeckia is closely allied to Melastoma, from which it is separated by its smaller, dry, poricidal capsules rather than fleshy berries. O. nepalensis is among the most ornamental species of the genus, valued horticulturally and used locally in herbal medicine. As a common, weedy coloniser of disturbed ground over a very large area, it carries no significant conservation concern.

Author: Hook. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 13, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, A Revision of Osbeckia (Melastomataceae)

Melastomataceae

Osbeckia nutans

by G & P Jürgens

Wall.

Bhutan2015 71
Bhutan Wangdi Phodrang 1700m, October
Bhutan2012 422
Bhutan Wangdi 2700m, September

Description

Osbeckia nutans Wall. is a subshrubby herb of the eastern Himalaya and adjoining Southeast Asia, recorded by GBIF (71 occurrences) from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Vietnam. It is a plant of open hillsides, grassy banks, forest clearings and roadside scrub in the subtropical to lower temperate zone, flowering chiefly in the autumn months. The cited Bhutanese material, gathered near Wangdue Phodrang at 1700 m in October and at 2700 m in September, illustrates its tolerance of a fairly wide altitudinal span on the warm, humid southern slopes where it colonises disturbed and seasonally moist ground.

The plant is an erect to ascending perennial with quadrangular, often setose stems bearing opposite, sessile to subsessile leaves. The leaf blades are lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate with the characteristic melastomataceous three-to-five strongly arcuate longitudinal nerves, and the surfaces are clothed in stiff appressed bristles. As the epithet nutans implies, the flowers or buds are inclined to nodding; the showy pink to purplish blooms have four petals, a setose, urceolate hypanthium, and the typical Melastomataceae androecium of geniculate stamens with elongate, beaked anthers opening by terminal pores. The fruit is a setose, urceolate capsule enclosed in the persistent hypanthium.

Osbeckia is a palaeotropical genus of around 50 species centred on tropical Asia, distinguished from the related Melastoma by its smaller, dry, pore-opening capsules. Its poricidal anthers are adapted to buzz-pollination by bees. Several Osbeckia species have ethnomedicinal uses in the region. Osbeckia nutans is locally frequent and not regarded as threatened, persisting well in open and lightly disturbed habitats.

Author: Wall. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Melastomataceae of the Indian Subcontinent, Hansen monograph on Osbeckia

Melastomataceae

Osbeckia stellata

by G & P Jürgens

Buch.-Ham. ex D.Don

Bhutan2012 530
Bhutan Tserang 1300m, September
Bhutan2012 660
Bhutan Tserang 1600m, September
Bhutan2015 206
Bhutan Zhemgang 1000m, October
Bhutan2015 207
Bhutan Zhemgang 1000m, October

Description

Osbeckia stellata Buch.-Ham. ex D.Don is a shrub of the melastome family ranging across the Himalaya and tropical Asia, recorded from China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Laos, with about 704 GBIF occurrences. It grows on open hillsides, forest margins, scrub, grassy banks and disturbed slopes in the subtropical and warm-temperate belt, generally between about 900 and 2000 m. It was recorded in Bhutan at Tserang at 1300 and 1600 m and at Zhemgang around 1000 m, flowering in September and October, when its conspicuous magenta blooms colour the autumn hill vegetation of the outer ranges.

It is an erect, branched shrub with quadrangular, often reddish stems bearing appressed, bristly stellate or strigose hairs. The leaves are opposite, ovate-lanceolate, entire, and conspicuously three- to five-nerved with the characteristic curved-convergent venation of Melastomataceae, both surfaces rough with stiff hairs. The flowers are large and showy, borne in terminal cymose clusters; the four broad obovate petals are rose-purple to magenta, surrounding eight stamens with distinctively geniculate, beaked anthers, set on an urceolate hypanthium clothed in branched, stellate-tipped bristles. The fruit is an urn-shaped capsule enclosed by the persistent bristly hypanthium, releasing numerous minute cochleate seeds.

Osbeckia is distinguished from the related Melastoma by its smaller seeds and capsular fruit, and O. stellata is among the most ornamental and widespread Himalayan species, sometimes grown for its vivid flowers. Its poricidal anthers are buzz-pollinated by bees, while the small seeds are dispersed from the dry capsules. Common in disturbed and secondary habitats, it readily colonises cleared ground and is of no conservation concern.

Author: Buch.-Ham. ex D.Don · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of British India, Melastomataceae monograph (Hansen revision of Osbeckia)

Oleaceae

Osmanthus suavis

by GP Jürgens

King ex C.B.Clarke

Bh2008 14 G24
Bhutan Thimphu-Chu, 2800m April
Nepal 2001 110 ergebnis ergebnis
East-Nepal Gupka Pokhari 3200m, April

Description

Osmanthus suavis King ex C.B.Clarke is an evergreen shrub or small tree of the olive family endemic to the eastern Himalaya and adjacent mountains, recorded from Nepal, India, Bhutan, China and Myanmar (158 GBIF occurrences). It grows in the understorey and margins of temperate broad-leaved and mixed conifer forest, on slopes, ridges and forest edges roughly between 2400 and 3500 m. It was documented in Bhutan along the Thimphu-Chu at 2800 m in April and in eastern Nepal at Gupka Pokhari around 3200 m, also in April, its flowering coinciding with the spring warming of the mid-montane forest belt.

It forms a densely branched shrub with grey, lenticellate bark. The leaves are opposite, coriaceous, elliptic to ovate-lanceolate, the margins entire or sparsely spinulose-serrate, glossy dark green above and dotted with minute glands beneath. The fragrant flowers are small and clustered in short axillary fascicles or cymes; the corolla is white to cream, gamopetalous with four spreading lobes united into a short tube, bearing two stamens, and the whole shrub is sweetly scented in flower, as the epithet suavis records. The fruit is an ovoid drupe ripening blue-black, with a single hard-walled stone.

Osmanthus belongs to tribe Oleeae and is centred on East and Southeast Asia, with O. suavis representing the Himalayan extension of this largely Sino-Japanese genus, allied to the fragrant cultivated O. fragrans. Its scented insect-pollinated flowers and drupaceous bird-dispersed fruits are typical of the genus. While not formally threatened, it is dependent on intact temperate forest and is locally valued as an ornamental and for its aromatic blossoms.

Author: King ex C.B.Clarke · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Nepal, Oleaceae monograph (Green revision of Osmanthus)

Euphorbiaceae

Ostodes paniculata

by G & P Jürgens

Blume

Bhutan2015 194
Bhutan Zhemgang 1000m, October
Bhutan2015 195
Bhutan Zhemgang 1000m, October

Description

Ostodes paniculata is a tree or large shrub widely distributed through tropical and subtropical Asia, recorded by GBIF from China, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Korea across more than 1100 occurrences. It is a component of evergreen and semi-evergreen broad-leaved forest in warm, humid lowland and lower montane settings, usually below about 1500 m, often on hillslopes and in valley forest. The photographed individual from Zhemgang in southern Bhutan at about 1000 m, in October, reflects this warm-temperate to subtropical foothill habitat where the species reaches the northern margin of its range along the Himalayan front.

The plant is a monoecious, evergreen tree with smooth bark and a milky or watery exudate. The leaves are alternate, simple, broadly elliptic to ovate, long-petiolate with a pair of glands at the petiole apex, the margin serrate to glandular-toothed and the base often with a few prominent basal nerves. The inflorescences are terminal panicles bearing numerous small white to creamy flowers, the staminate and pistillate flowers separate, with five petals and conspicuous disk glands; staminate flowers have numerous stamens. The fruit is a globose, three-locular capsule, somewhat woody, that splits septicidally to release the large smooth seeds.

Ostodes is a small genus of the Euphorbiaceae (subfamily Crotonoideae) centred on tropical Asia, and O. paniculata is its most widespread and well-known species, valued locally for its timber and seed oil. Its broad range and tolerance of secondary forest mean it is not of conservation concern, and it is frequent across much of Indo-Malaya. Phytogeographically it exemplifies the Indo-Malayan element that penetrates the Himalaya through the warm, wet foothill forests of Bhutan and northeast India.

Author: Blume · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Thailand, Radcliffe-Smith Euphorbiaceae treatments

Santalaceae

Osyris lanceolata

by G & P Jürgens

Hochst. & Steud.

Bhutan2014 151
Bhutan Trashigang 1700m, May

Description

Osyris lanceolata, the East African sandalwood, is a remarkably wide-ranging evergreen shrub spanning the Mediterranean basin, much of Africa and southern Asia; its roughly 4217 GBIF records reach from Spain, Portugal and Morocco through eastern and southern Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola) to India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, China and Bhutan. In the eastern Himalaya it occupies warm, dry montane slopes, as recorded near Trashigang in eastern Bhutan at about 1700 m in May. It favours open woodland, scrub and rocky hillsides on well-drained soils, persisting as a hardy, drought-tolerant component of seasonally dry vegetation.

The plant is a glabrous, much-branched shrub or small tree with slender, angular green twigs and alternate, leathery leaves that are narrowly lanceolate to elliptic, sometimes reduced and scale-like. Like other Santalaceae it is a hemiparasite, attaching by root haustoria to neighbouring plants while retaining green, photosynthetic foliage. The species is dioecious, bearing small, greenish-yellow flowers in axillary clusters on separate plants; the inferior ovary develops into a small, globose, fleshy drupe ripening red to blackish and dispersed by birds.

Osyris belongs to the sandalwood family, and O. lanceolata is exploited as a substitute for true sandalwood, its aromatic, oil-rich heartwood harvested for fragrant oil, carvings and incense. This demand has driven heavy, often illegal exploitation, particularly in East Africa, causing severe population declines and the listing of its populations under CITES Appendix II. The Himalayan populations form part of this broad, biogeographically intriguing range.

Author: Hochst. & Steud. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 5, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 1, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Tropical East Africa (Santalaceae)

Fabaceae

Ototropis conferta

by GP Jürgens

 (DC.) H.Ohashi & K.Ohashi.

Bhutan2012 958
Bhutan Trithangebe 1200m, October
Bhutan2012 959
Bhutan Trithangebe 1200m, October
Bhutan2012 1004
Bhutan Trithangebe 1400m, October

Description

Ototropis conferta is a Himalayan legume distributed through Nepal, India and Bhutan, with GBIF recording about 112 occurrences across the central and eastern ranges. It is a shrub of warm temperate and subtropical hill forest, growing on open slopes, forest edges, scrub and roadside banks typically between roughly 1000 and 2000 m. The accompanying records from Trithangebe in southern Bhutan at 1200 and 1400 m, flowering in October, capture its characteristic autumn flowering in the lower-montane belt, where it forms part of the shrubby understorey and edge vegetation alongside other broom-like legumes on well-drained, often disturbed ground.

It is a woody shrub with slender, sometimes arching branches that are finely pubescent when young. The leaves are pinnately trifoliolate, the leaflets elliptic to ovate with entire margins and an appressed indumentum, subtended by small stipules. The inflorescences are dense, many-flowered terminal and axillary racemes or panicles, the epithet referring to the crowded arrangement of the flowers. Each papilionaceous flower has a campanulate calyx and a corolla of standard, wings and keel, coloured pink to purple, fading as it ages. The diadelphous stamens are enclosed within the keel. The fruit is a flattened, several-jointed loment that breaks at maturity into one-seeded articles, their surfaces clad in hooked hairs that promote epizoochorous dispersal.

The species was long placed in the large genus Desmodium as D. confertum, and was transferred to Ototropis by H.Ohashi and K.Ohashi following molecular and morphological revision of the Desmodieae, which fragmented the traditional broad Desmodium into several segregate genera. As a nitrogen-fixing pioneer of forest edges and disturbed slopes it contributes to soil enrichment and early successional cover, and its adhesive loment articles make it an effective colonist of new ground. It is neither rare nor of particular conservation concern across its Himalayan range.

Author: (DC.) H.Ohashi & K.Ohashi. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Ohashi & Ohashi revision of the Desmodium group, Legumes of the World