DC.
Description
Tricholepis elongata is a thistle-like composite of the Himalaya and adjacent regions, with roughly 120 GBIF occurrences recorded chiefly from India, Nepal and Pakistan. It is a plant of warm to cool temperate slopes, favouring open, sunny, often dry and somewhat rocky or grassy ground, scrub margins, banks and disturbed sites in the montane zone. The specimen photographed at Kunol in Garhwal, India, at about 2550 m in September was recorded toward the close of the monsoon, the late-summer to autumn flowering period when many montane thistle relatives in this elevational band come into bloom.
It is an erect, branched perennial or biennial herb, the stems slender and elongate as the epithet suggests, bearing alternate leaves that are linear to lanceolate, entire to toothed or somewhat divided, and frequently roughened. The capitula are solitary or few at the branch tips and are homogamous, composed wholly of slender tubular disc florets, pink to purple in colour. The involucral bracts (phyllaries) are numerous, narrow and tapering, often with finely fringed or hair-tipped margins, a feature reflected in the generic name. The fruit is a small cypsela crowned by a pappus of fine bristles or scales that promotes wind dispersal.
Tricholepis belongs to tribe Cardueae, the thistle tribe, and is distinguished by its finely dissected or ciliate phyllary appendages and bristly pappus. The genus is centred on the Indian subcontinent and the Himalaya. As a species of open and frequently disturbed montane habitats, T. elongata is not of conservation concern; such thistle-relatives provide nectar and pollen to a range of insect pollinators and contribute to the herbaceous flora of dry temperate slopes.
Author: DC. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Hooker Flora of British India, Flora of Nepal, Susanna & Garcia-Jacas Cardueae systematics