Tag:

Subalpine (2500-3500 m)

Lamiaceae

Mosla dianthera 

by GP Jürgens

(Buch.-Ham. ex Roxb.) Maxim.

Bhutan2015 32
Bhutan Dochu-La 2800m, October
Bhutan2015 33
Bhutan Dochu-La 2800m, October

Description

Mosla dianthera is a widespread annual mint of monsoonal Asia, ranging from the Himalaya (Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar) across China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Russian Far East south into mainland and insular Southeast Asia; with over 7000 GBIF occurrences it is among the most frequently recorded species of its genus. It grows in disturbed and seasonally moist ground, including roadsides, field margins, fallow land, streambanks and open grassy slopes from the lowlands into the temperate hills, as recorded at Dochu-La in Bhutan at 2800 m. As an autumn-flowering annual it completes its cycle on the late monsoon moisture, flowering and fruiting in October.

It is a slender, erect, aromatic annual herb with the quadrangular stems typical of the Lamiaceae, often much branched and sparsely hairy. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, serrate along the margin and gland-dotted, releasing a pungent scent when crushed. The flowers are borne in lax, terminal and axillary racemes; each two-lipped corolla is small, pale pink to purplish, with a notched upper lip and a three-lobed lower lip. Diagnostic for Mosla are the two fertile stamens (the epithet "dianthera" referring to the two anthers) and the reticulately pitted nutlets. The fruit comprises four small, dry, one-seeded nutlets enclosed in the persistent, gland-dotted calyx.

Mosla is a small Asian genus segregated from Orthodon and allied to Perilla and Elsholtzia within the subfamily Nepetoideae, characterised by the reduction to two stamens and by aromatic terpene-rich foliage. The essential oils of M. dianthera are used in traditional medicine, and the plant is a minor nectar source for bees and other insects. Being a ruderal, broadly tolerant annual of vast geographic range, it is of least conservation concern and is sometimes weedy. (The associated WordPress link erroneously references Pogostemon benghalensis; the taxon treated here is Mosla dianthera.)

Author: (Buch.-Ham. ex Roxb.) Maxim. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Li & Hedge's treatment of the Lamiaceae

Commelinaceae

Murdannia divergens

by G & P Jürgens

(G.Brückn.

Bhutan2012 426
Bhutan Wangdi 2700m, September

Description

Murdannia divergens (G.Brückn.) Faden ex D.Y.Hong is a dayflower relative widely distributed across tropical and subtropical Asia, recorded by GBIF from China, India, Taiwan, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Bhutan and Laos, with over 500 occurrences. It grows in damp grassland, open forest, scrub, marshy ground and along streamsides, lowland to montane. The Bhutanese material from Wangdi at 2700 m in September reflects its occurrence well into the temperate zone and its late-monsoon flowering, when soil moisture supports the succulent growth typical of the family.

It is a perennial or sometimes annual herb with fleshy roots and ascending to decumbent stems rooting at the lower nodes. The leaves are alternate, linear to linear-lanceolate, sheathing at the base in the manner of the Commelinaceae, with parallel venation. The inflorescence is a terminal, often divergently branched (as the epithet suggests) thyrse, the flowers actinomorphic with three free, ephemeral blue to violet or pinkish-mauve petals and bearded stamens with staminodes, typically three fertile. Each flower lasts a single day; the fruit is a small three-locular loculicidal capsule releasing few rugose seeds.

Murdannia, segregated from Aneilema and Commelina, comprises herbs of seasonally wet ground, and M. divergens belongs to its montane-adapted members. Its day-lasting flowers are pollinated by small bees and hoverflies attracted to the stamen hairs and pollen-presenting anthers. The wide Asian range and ecological flexibility of the species make it common in seasonally moist habitats; it is not threatened, though its dependence on wetland margins links local abundance to monsoon hydrology.

Author: (G.Brückn. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 24, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 3, Flora of Nepal, Faden revisions of Asian Commelinaceae

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

Boraginaceae

Myosotis sylvatica

by G & P Jürgens

Hoffm.

Garh 07 196 ergebnis
India Garhwal Panwali 3250m, June
Garh 07 391 ergebnis
India Garhwal Kia-Kutti 3950m, June

Description

Myosotis sylvatica, the wood forget-me-not, is a widespread temperate herb whose native core lies across Europe and western Asia, with very large GBIF representation (over 171,000 records) from Britain, Germany, France, Scandinavia and the Alpine countries, plus naturalised populations in North America, Australia and New Zealand. In the western Himalaya it occurs as a montane element, as shown by the Garhwal collections at Panwali around 3250 m and Kia-Kutti near 3950 m, both in June. There it grows in moist meadows, along streamsides and on grassy alpine slopes, favouring cool, humus-rich soils with reliable seasonal moisture.

The plant is a softly hairy biennial or short-lived perennial forming a basal rosette from which arise erect to ascending leafy stems. The lower leaves are oblanceolate and stalked, the upper sessile and oblong. The inflorescence is the characteristic scorpioid cyme of the genus, uncoiling as the flowers open. Each flower has a five-lobed hairy calyx and a salverform corolla with a short tube and flat, usually sky-blue limb of five rounded lobes, the throat closed by yellow scales. The gynoecium develops into four smooth, shining, dark nutlets seated on the persistent calyx.

Myosotis is a taxonomically intricate genus in which M. sylvatica is distinguished from the annual field forget-me-nots by its larger, flat-faced flowers and from M. scorpioides by its drier habitats and hooked-haired calyx. Widely grown as a cottage-garden ornamental, it self-seeds freely and has escaped cultivation across several continents. The species is globally secure and of least concern, its abundance contrasting with the restricted ranges of many Himalayan congeners.

Author: Hoffm. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 16, Flora of Pakistan, Flora of Nepal, Flora Europaea (Tutin et al.)

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)

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)

Asteraceae

Neobrachyactis anomala 

by G & P Jürgens

(DC.) Brouillet

Garw 2005 77 ergebnis ergebnis
India Garhwal Gaushon 3000m, September

Description

Neobrachyactis anomala is a Himalayan composite distributed from Pakistan and Iran eastward through India, Nepal, Bhutan and southern Tibet (China), with around 153 records in GBIF. It is a plant of disturbed and open montane to subalpine ground: rocky slopes, screes, riverbanks, fallow fields, roadsides and forest clearings, generally between about 2500 and 4000 m. The population photographed at Gaushon in Garhwal, India, at around 3000 m in September occupies this kind of late-season, semi-ruderal high-mountain habitat where the species sets seed before winter.

It is an annual or short-lived herb with erect, often branched stems bearing alternate, lanceolate to oblong leaves that are toothed or pinnately lobed and somewhat glandular or hairy. The small heads (capitula) are numerous, arranged in a leafy panicle, each with an involucre of narrow bracts. As the generic relationship to Brachyactis implies, the heads are disciform: the marginal florets are female, filiform and very shortly rayed or rayless, surrounding numerous yellowish bisexual disc florets. The fruit is a small flattened cypsela crowned by a pappus of fine bristles facilitating wind dispersal.

The species was long placed in Brachyactis and allied to Erigeron and Aster, but molecular phylogenetic work in the Astereae led Brouillet to transfer it to the segregate genus Neobrachyactis, reflected in its current author citation. Its annual, ruderal strategy and abundant wind-dispersed achenes suit it to colonising unstable and disturbed alpine terrain. It is widespread and locally common, and as a weedy pioneer it is under no conservation concern; if anything such opportunistic species may expand with increasing human disturbance of mountain landscapes.

Author: (DC.) Brouillet · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Pakistan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Brouillet Systematics of North American Astereae

Lamiaceae

Nepeta govaniana 

by G & P Jürgens

Benth.

Garw 2005 67 ergebnis ergebnis
India Garhwal Valley of flowers 3350m, September

Description

Nepeta govaniana is a western Himalayan endemic catmint distributed through the mountains of northern India, Pakistan and adjacent China, with GBIF recording about 169 occurrences concentrated in the north-western ranges. It is a plant of the upper temperate and subalpine zone, generally between roughly 2400 and 3700 m, the photographed material coming from the Valley of Flowers in Indian Garhwal at 3350 m, still in flower in September. It grows in moist alpine and subalpine meadows, forest clearings, among shrubberies and along stream banks on cool, humus-rich soils, often in the open herb-rich grassland of the high western Himalaya.

The species is an erect, aromatic perennial herb reaching about 0.6-1 m, with simple or branched, finely pubescent quadrangular stems. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, ovate to ovate-oblong with a cordate or truncate base, acuminate apex and coarsely serrate margins, somewhat soft-hairy and pleasantly scented. Distinctively for a Nepeta, the flowers are pale yellow rather than blue or violet; they are borne in lax, often paniculate terminal cymes, the tubular calyx fifteen-nerved and two-lipped, the corolla two-lipped with a broad, notched lower lip. The fruit comprises four smooth ovoid nutlets.

Nepeta (Lamiaceae) is a large, mainly Eurasian genus, and N. govaniana is unusual in its soft yellow corollas, a feature that has made it a valued ornamental in temperate gardens. Its open, two-lipped flowers are visited and pollinated chiefly by bees. Locally frequent within its restricted western Himalayan range, it is not regarded as threatened, though its dependence on intact moist subalpine meadows links its fortunes to high-pasture land use.

Author: Benth. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Flora Simlensis, Flora of British India (Hooker), Hedge revision of Himalayan Nepeta, Harley et al. Labiatae (Kubitzki, The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants)