银萼龙胆 yin e long dan

Gentiana capitata Buchanan-Hamilton ex D. Don var. strobiliformis C. B. Clarke.

Annuals 1.5-4 cm tall. Stems erect, lower half simple and leafless, upper half angled, much branched with short internodes, apically with many leaves and flowering branches crowded into a capitulum, densely puberulent. Leaves overlapping, crowded; petiole tube 0.5-1 mm; leaf blade obovate to flabellate, 3-5 × 3.5-6 mm, glabrous, base narrowed to obtuse, margin ca. 0.5 mm wide, membranous, and smooth, apex rounded to truncate and mucronate with a recurved tip, midvein crested. Flowers many, subsessile. Calyx obconic, 4-4.5 mm, tube membranous; lobes oblong to suborbicular, 1.2-1.5 mm, herbaceous, margin membranous, ca. 0.5 mm wide, and smooth, apex rounded and mucronate with a recurved tip, midvein crested. Corolla blue, with pale yellow base, broadly tubular, 7-8 mm; lobes broadly ovate, 1.2-1.5 mm, margin entire, apex obtuse to rounded; plicae semiorbicular, 0.5-0.8 mm, margin entire or indistinctly denticulate, apex rounded. Stamens inserted at middle of corolla tube, equal; filaments 1.5-2 mm; anthers narrowly ellipsoid, 0.5-0.7 mm. Style 1-1.3 mm; stigma lobes narrowly oblong. Capsules ovoid, ca. 2 mm; gynophore 0.7-1 mm. Fl. and fr. Jun.

Alpine meadows; 2600-4500 m. S Xizang [Bhutan, NW India, Nepal, Sikkim].