Tag:

Subalpine (2500-3500 m)

Brassicaceae

Draba radicans

by G & P Jürgens

Royle

Garh 07 354 ergebnis
Garh 07 355 ergebnis
India Garhwal Dohdi-Tal 3400m, June

Description

Draba radicans is a high-alpine crucifer of the Himalayan chain, with GBIF documenting 55 occurrences from Nepal, India and Bhutan. It is a plant of the upper subalpine to alpine zone, growing among rocks, screes, moist turf and the margins of snowmelt flushes where competition from taller vegetation is slight. The image was taken at Dohdi-Tal in Garhwal, India, at about 3400 m in June, when receding snow exposes the open stony slopes and the rosettes come into flower at the start of the brief alpine growing season.

It is a small perennial herb forming low rosettes or loose mats from a slender taproot and branching caudex, the specific epithet radicans alluding to its tendency to root and spread at the base. The leaves are mostly basal, oblanceolate to spathulate, entire or obscurely toothed, and clothed in simple, forked and stellate hairs characteristic of the genus. The flowering stems are short and often leafless or few-leaved, bearing a short raceme of small flowers with four yellow (fading whitish) petals, four sepals and the tetradynamous stamens of the family. The fruit is a flattened, oblong to elliptic silicula on a short pedicel, containing several small seeds.

Draba (Brassicaceae) is one of the largest genera of arctic and alpine plants, with numerous narrowly distributed Himalayan species whose delimitation rests on trichome type and fruit shape. D. radicans is part of the diverse Himalayan alpine Draba assemblage, an element sensitive to climatic warming and the upward retreat of snowbeds. Though not formally assessed, its restriction to cold high-elevation habitats makes such alpine specialists of conservation interest as indicators of mountain ecosystem change.

Author: Royle · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Jafri's Flora of West Pakistan (Brassicaceae), Schulz monograph of Draba

Droseraceae

Drosera peltata

by GP Jürgens

Thunb.

Sikkim2011 185
Sikkim Lachung 2600m, June
Nepal 99 996 ergebnis
West-Nepal Juphal 2550m, July

Description

Drosera peltata is one of the most widely distributed of all sundews, a carnivorous herb ranging from Australia and New Zealand through East and Southeast Asia to the Himalaya, with GBIF holding an exceptional 32363 occurrences across Australia, China, Japan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea and many further countries. In the Himalaya it grows in open, wet, nutrient-poor situations: boggy grassland, mossy banks, seepage slopes, marshy meadows and damp roadside cuttings, generally between 1500 and 3000 m. The localities cited for the image, Lachung in Sikkim at about 2600 m in June and Juphal in West Nepal at around 2550 m in July, are typical mid-montane wet-meadow sites where the plant flowers during the early monsoon.

Unlike the rosette-forming sundews, D. peltata is an erect, often tuberous-rooted herb whose slender stem bears alternate, peltate to lunate leaves on long petioles. The leaf blades are crescent-shaped and clothed on their margins and upper surface with stalked glandular hairs (tentacles) tipped with glistening mucilaginous droplets that entrap small insects; the tentacles then bend inward and the leaf secretes enzymes to digest the prey. Basal rosette leaves may be present at germination but wither as the stem elongates. The inflorescence is a one-sided raceme of small white to pinkish five-merous flowers, opening in bright sunshine, and the fruit is a small capsule with numerous minute seeds.

Droseraceae are carnivorous, and the tuberous, stem-forming peltata complex constitutes a distinctive lineage within Drosera that has been variously subdivided into segregate species and subspecies by different authors, making it one of the more taxonomically contentious sundew groups. Insect capture supplies nitrogen and phosphorus otherwise scarce in the acidic, waterlogged soils it inhabits, and the underground tuber permits dormancy through dry or unfavourable seasons. Given its enormous geographic range the species as a whole is of no conservation concern, although individual Himalayan wetland populations are locally susceptible to drainage and habitat loss.

Author: Thunb. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 8, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 1, Flora of Nepal, Lowrie Carnivorous Plants of Australia Magnum Opus

Asteraceae

Duhaldea nervosa 

by G & P Jürgens

(Wall. ex DC.) Anderb.

Garw 2005 265 ergebnis
India Garhwal Kuno 2800m, September

Description

Duhaldea nervosa is a perennial composite of the Himalaya and montane south-east Asia, recorded from China, Nepal, Thailand, India, Bhutan, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam. Its roughly 584 georeferenced collections span the temperate to subtropical hill belt from the western Himalaya eastward into Indochina. It grows on grassy slopes, open hillsides, forest margins, roadside banks and in scrub, favouring well-drained sunny to lightly shaded ground. The photographed plant from Garhwal at Kuno at 2800 m, flowering in September, is typical of its upper-temperate habitat and its late-monsoon to autumn flowering, when the capitula open above the surrounding herbage.

It is an erect, often hairy perennial herb with leafy stems arising from a woody rootstock. The alternate leaves are elliptic to lanceolate or oblong, with a finely toothed margin and conspicuous, raised lateral veins on the lower surface, the prominent venation giving the species its epithet nervosa. The capitula are radiate and borne in terminal corymbose clusters, each head with an involucre of several rows of imbricate, herbaceous to membranous bracts. The yellow ray florets are female and ligulate, surrounding numerous yellow, tubular, bisexual disc florets. The fruit is a ribbed, cylindrical cypsela crowned by a pappus of barbellate bristles that aids wind dispersal.

Duhaldea was segregated from the broadly defined Inula and now comprises a group of Asian species formerly placed in that genus; D. nervosa was transferred from Inula by Anderberg, as the parenthetical authorship records. Members of the tribe Inuleae, these plants are visited by a range of generalist insect pollinators. D. nervosa is widespread and locally common across its extensive range and is of no conservation concern, several allied species being used in regional folk medicine.

Author: (Wall. ex DC.) Anderb. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 20-21, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2, Flora of Nepal, Anderberg's Phylogeny and Reclassification of the Tribe Inuleae

Verbenaceae

Duranta erecta

by GP Jürgens

L.

Bhutan2015 508
Bhutan Phobjika 2800m, October

Description

Duranta erecta, commonly called golden dewdrop or pigeon berry, is native to the Neotropics, ranging from Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America through tropical South America to Argentina and Brazil. It has, however, become one of the most widely cultivated and naturalised ornamental shrubs in warm regions worldwide, a fact reflected in its enormous GBIF tally of over nineteen thousand occurrences spanning the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia. In the Himalaya it occurs only as a cultivated and locally escaping plant; the individual photographed at Phobjika in Bhutan at 2800 m in October represents such a planting in a temperate valley, well above the species' tropical comfort zone, where it is grown as a hedge or garden ornamental and flowers and fruits abundantly in the warm season. It thrives in disturbed ground, gardens, roadsides and waste places, and in many tropical countries is regarded as an invasive weed.

The plant is an evergreen, often spreading shrub or small tree to several metres, with slender, arching, sometimes pendulous and frequently spiny branches that may be four-angled when young. The leaves are opposite or whorled, elliptic to obovate, entire to toothed in the upper half, and light green. The flowers are borne in slender terminal and axillary racemes; the tubular corolla is pale blue to lavender (occasionally white), with five spreading, slightly unequal lobes. The fruit is a glossy, rounded, yellow to orange drupe enclosed by the persistent, beaked calyx, borne in showy pendent clusters; the berries and foliage contain saponins and are toxic to humans and livestock, though birds disperse the seeds freely.

Duranta is a small genus traditionally placed in the Verbenaceae, and D. erecta is its most familiar species, prized horticulturally for its long flowering season, attractive golden fruits and several variegated and golden-leaved cultivars. Its ornamental virtues are matched by a significant ecological downside: through bird-mediated seed dispersal it has become a serious environmental weed in parts of Australia, southern Africa and the Pacific. Its presence in the high Bhutanese Himalaya illustrates the global reach of horticultural commerce, and although frost limits its persistence at such elevations, its weediness elsewhere makes it a species of note for biosecurity rather than conservation.

Author: L. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 17, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 2 Part 2, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Pakistan, A Generic Revision of the Verbenaceae (Harold N. Moldenke)

Asteraceae

Echinops cornigerus 

by G & P Jürgens

DC.

Garw 2005 182 ergebnis ergebnis
India Garhwal Pana 2800m, September

Description

Echinops cornigerus is a Sino-Himalayan globe-thistle distributed across the western and central Himalaya and adjacent Tibetan plateau, with verified records from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and China, alongside a scatter of cultivated or extra-regional occurrences (Iran, France, Belgium) among the roughly 294 georeferenced GBIF collections. It inhabits open, sunny slopes, dry stony pastures, forest margins and disturbed ground in the upper temperate to subalpine belt, typically between about 2000 and 3500 m. The plant photographed at Pana in the Garhwal Himalaya at 2800 m in September, fruiting at the close of the monsoon, exemplifies its preference for well-drained montane grassland exposed to strong insolation.

A stout perennial herb, it forms an erect, ridged and somewhat cottony-tomentose stem arising from a woody rootstock. The leaves are coriaceous, deeply pinnatifid to bipinnatifid, glabrescent and green above but white-tomentose beneath, the lobes terminating in conspicuous rigid yellowish spines. The inflorescence is the spherical compound capitulum characteristic of the genus: numerous one-flowered capitula aggregated into a globose synflorescence, each enclosed by stiff bristly involucral scales. The corollas are tubular, pale blue to whitish, and the achenes are cylindrical, densely hairy and crowned by a short pappus of fused scales.

The genus Echinops is taxonomically intricate, the spherical secondary head having evolved as a striking adaptation that pools many reduced florets into a single pollinator-attracting unit. The spiny architecture deters mammalian grazing, an advantage in heavily pastured Himalayan rangelands. Though not assessed as threatened, populations are locally affected by overgrazing and slope disturbance, and the species remains a useful indicator of dry montane grassland.

Author: DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Flora of China (Asteraceae), Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Kew monograph of Echinops

Elaeagnaceae

Elaeagnus caudata

by GP Jürgens

Schltdl.

Bh09 46 G84
Bhutan Paro 2400m, June
Bhutan2014 852 scaled
Bhutan Thimphu 2500m, May
Bhutan2014 853 scaled
Bhutan Thimphu 2500m, May

Description

Elaeagnus caudata Schltdl. ex Momiy. is a shrub or small tree of the Elaeagnaceae endemic to the central and eastern Himalaya, known from Nepal, northern India and Bhutan. Documented from only a small number of georeferenced collections, it grows in temperate forest margins, thickets, shrubby slopes and along the edges of cultivation in the mid-montane zone. The photographed plants from the Paro and Thimphu valleys of Bhutan, recorded at 2,400–2,500 m in May and June, are characteristic of its preference for the cool, well-lit temperate belt where it flowers in late spring and early summer.

The plant is densely clothed throughout in the silvery to rusty-brown peltate scales typical of the family, which give the young shoots, leaf undersides and flowers a metallic lustre. The leaves are alternate, elliptic to ovate, often long-acuminate (the caudate apex giving the species its name), green and stellate-scaly above and silvery-lepidote beneath. The flowers are small, tubular and apetalous, with a four-lobed, silvery-scaly perianth, fragrant and borne in axillary clusters. The fruit is an oblong, drupe-like achene enclosed by the fleshy, accrescent perianth tube, ripening reddish and scaly, edible when fully mature.

Like other members of Elaeagnus, the species harbours nitrogen-fixing Frankia actinobacteria in root nodules, enabling it to colonise poor soils and contribute to soil fertility, a trait that makes such shrubs significant in montane succession. Its restricted Himalayan range and the small number of records suggest it is genuinely localised, though the difficulty of distinguishing the many scaly-leaved Himalayan Elaeagnus species means its true distribution may be under-documented and warrants further survey.

Author: Schltdl. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 1, Flora of China Vol. 13, Sun & Lin: Revision of Elaeagnus

Lamiaceae

Elsholtzia flava 

by G & P Jürgens

Benth.

Garw 2005 221 ergebnis ergebnis
India Garhwal Simkarok 2700m, September

Description

Elsholtzia flava is a Sino-Himalayan element distributed across the temperate to subtropical mountains of southern and eastern Asia, with verified records from China, Nepal, India, Bhutan and Japan; GBIF aggregates some 558 occurrences, several of them at the eastern margin of the genus's range. In the western Himalaya it ascends to around 2700 m, as documented by the photographed material from Simkarok in Indian Garhwal collected in September, the late-monsoon flowering season. It is a plant of open slopes, forest margins, clearings and disturbed ground on moist, humus-rich soils, behaving as a robust ruderal sub-shrub that exploits gaps in the upper temperate broadleaf belt.

The species is a coarse, aromatic perennial or shrubby herb reaching 1-2 m, with erect, branched, quadrangular and finely pubescent stems woody at the base. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, broadly ovate to ovate-lanceolate, acuminate at the apex and crenate-serrate along the margins, glandular-punctate beneath and exuding the characteristic mint scent of the genus. Small flowers are crowded into dense, secund, cylindrical spike-like verticillasters; the campanulate calyx is five-toothed and the corolla pale yellow ("flava"), two-lipped, with four didynamous exserted stamens. The fruit comprises four smooth, ovoid-oblong nutlets enclosed in the persistent calyx.

Elsholtzia (Lamiaceae, tribe Elsholtzieae) is centred on eastern Asia and includes many late-flowering, nectar-rich, bee-pollinated species important to autumn foragers. E. flava is locally common and not regarded as threatened, its tolerance of disturbance favouring persistence; its terpenoid-rich essential oils link it to congeners long used in folk medicine and as aromatic herbs across the Himalayan and Chinese highlands.

Author: Benth. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of Pakistan, Press et al. Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Harley et al. Labiatae (Kubitzki, The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants)

Lamiaceae

Elsholtzia fruticosa

by GP Jürgens

Rehder

Bhutan2015 463
  Bhutan Jakar 2100m, October
Bhutan2012 104
Bhutan Shele-La, 3600m September
Garw 2005 203 ergebnis ergebnis
India Garhwal Pana 2750m, September
Bhutan2015 607
Bhutan Gasa 1950m, October

Description

Elsholtzia fruticosa is a widespread shrubby mint of the Himalaya and south-western China, recorded by GBIF (1928 occurrences) from China, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Pakistan, Malaysia and Myanmar. It is a plant of open, disturbed and sunny situations, colonising forest margins, scrub, roadsides, terraced field edges, river banks and clearings, broadly between 1500 and 3600 m. The cited collections span a wide elevational and seasonal range, from Bhutan's Gasa (1950 m) and Jakar (2100 m), through Garhwal in India (Pana, 2750 m), up to the Shele-La pass at 3600 m, flowering from September into October, reflecting its autumn-blooming habit across the central and eastern Himalaya.

The species is an aromatic, much-branched shrub or subshrub reaching 1-3 m, with quadrangular, pubescent stems woody at the base. The opposite leaves are lanceolate to elliptic, serrate, pinnately veined, often greyish-tomentose beneath and dotted with aromatic glands. The small flowers are crowded into dense, cylindrical, spike-like terminal and axillary thyrses, frequently secund, with the whitish to pale-yellow flowers turned to one side of the axis. Each flower has a campanulate calyx and a bilabiate corolla; the four stamens are exserted, giving the inflorescence a feathery aspect. The fruit comprises four small, smooth nutlets (mericarps) enclosed within the persistent calyx.

Described under the combination by Rehder, the species belongs to genus Elsholtzia (subfamily Nepetoideae, tribe Elsholtzieae), a group of aromatic herbs and shrubs centred on temperate Asia. Its essential-oil-rich foliage is used in local traditional medicine and as a minor source of nectar for late-season pollinators. As a vigorous, pioneer-like colonist of disturbed ground with a very broad range, it is of least conservation concern and is locally abundant rather than rare.

Author: Rehder · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, A Revision of the Genus Elsholtzia (Lamiaceae)

Ericaceae

Enkianthus deflexus

by GP Jürgens

(Griff.) C.K.Schneid.

Sikkim2004 377 G654
Sikkim/India Lachung 2900m May
Nepal 1994 259 ergebnis
Ost-Nepal Milka-Danda 2850m May 
Sikkim 2006 21 ergebnis
Sikkim 2006 53 ergebnis
India West-Bengal Tonglu 3100m, May

Description

Enkianthus deflexus is a deciduous shrub or small tree of the temperate Himalaya and southwestern China, distributed through China, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar, and very well documented with around 1667 GBIF records (further records reflect wide cultivation in Europe, North America and East Asia). It forms part of the understorey and forest-margin vegetation of moist temperate forest and Rhododendron-dominated slopes, typically between about 2400 and 3600 m. The cited collections from Lachung in Sikkim (2900 m), Milka Danda in east Nepal (2850 m) and Tonglu in West Bengal (3100 m), all flowering in May, mark its synchronous late-spring anthesis across the cool, humid mid-montane belt.

The species is a many-branched shrub whose leaves cluster toward the ends of the twigs in pseudowhorls; they are obovate to elliptic, finely serrulate, often colouring richly in autumn, and subtended by reddish young growth. The flowers are borne in pendent terminal racemes or umbel-like clusters, each on a slender, often reflexed pedicel (whence deflexus). The corolla is campanulate, creamy to yellowish suffused with red veining, with five short recurved lobes; ten stamens are enclosed within. The fruit is an erect, dehiscent woody capsule on the recurving pedicel, releasing small winged or angled seeds.

Enkianthus is an early-diverging genus of the Ericaceae, sister to much of the rest of the family, and its bell-shaped, nectar-bearing flowers are pollinated by bees and other insects. E. deflexus is valued horticulturally for its dainty blossoms and brilliant autumn foliage, explaining its broad cultivated footprint. Within its native range it is common and not of conservation concern, a characteristic and widespread component of Himalayan temperate forest understoreys.

Author: (Griff.) C.K.Schneid. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China (Ericaceae), Stevens Revision of Enkianthus

Orchideaceae

Epipactis helleborine 

by G & P Jürgens

(L.) Crantz

Nepal 99 880 ergebnis
West-Nepal Suli-Khola 3200m, July

Description

Epipactis helleborine, the broad-leaved helleborine, is among the most widespread terrestrial orchids in the world, native across Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia and naturalised extensively in North America. Its enormous GBIF dataset of over 378,000 occurrences spans France, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, the United States, Canada and much of Eurasia, reflecting its tolerance of woodland, scrub, road verges and disturbed ground from the lowlands to the mountains. Within the Himalaya it ascends to high elevations, the material illustrated here coming from West Nepal at Suli-Khola at 3200 m in July, where it flowers in shaded summer pastures and forest edges on calcareous or humic soils.

The plant is a stout, leafy perennial herb growing from a short rhizome with numerous fleshy roots. The erect stem bears several broadly ovate to lanceolate, plicate, spirally arranged cauline leaves that diminish into bracts upward. The inflorescence is a one-sided, many-flowered raceme of nodding flowers; each flower has greenish to purplish ovate tepals and a distinctive two-part labellum comprising a cup-shaped hypochile holding nectar and a heart-shaped, recurved epichile bearing two basal bosses. The column is short, and pollination is typically effected by wasps; the fruit is a pendent, ribbed capsule releasing innumerable dust-like seeds.

Epipactis helleborine is taxonomically variable, encompassing numerous regional ecotypes and segregate microspecies, and is notable for its partial mycoheterotrophy, drawing carbon from ectomycorrhizal fungi which permits it to grow in deep shade. Its colonisation of urban and ruderal habitats has made it a successful adventive, and in parts of North America it is regarded as weedy. The species is of least conservation concern globally given its abundance and ecological adaptability.

Author: (L.) Crantz · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora Europaea, Genera Orchidacearum, The Genus Epipactis: A Monograph, Orchids of the Himalaya