凉山紫菀 liang shan zi wan

Herbs, perennial, 50-80 cm; rhizome vertical or procumbent. Stems erect or ascending, thick, multibranched, finely sulcate, strigose and strigillose. Leaves cauline, abaxially strigose, veins with sparse sessile glands and sparsely villous-strigose, midvein and 5 or 6 pairs of lateral veins prominent, conspicuously reticulate, adaxially densely strigose; lower leaves withered by anthesis; middle leaves sessile or shortly petiolate; blade ovate to broadly lanceolate, 6-11 × 1.5-2.5 cm, base gradually or abruptly attenuate, rarely subrounded, subclasping, margin serrate, teeth mucronulate, scabrous, apex acute to acuminate; upper leaves lanceolate, 3-5 × 0.5-1 cm, margin entire or serrulate. Capitula in terminal, open corymbiform synflorescences, 3-4 cm in diam.; peduncles 2-10 cm; bract linear-lanceolate when present. Involucres hemispheric, 10-12 mm in diam.; phyllaries 3-seriate, subequal, 5-6 × 1.5-1.8 mm, abaxially villous-strigillose, margin scarious (outer phyllaries narrowly so), erose-fimbriate, purplish; outer phyllaries oblong to oblanceolate, leaflike, base hardened, apex acute to acuminate, sometimes recurved, glandular; inner phyllaries membranous, apex herbaceous. Ray florets 50-60, blue-purple, tube 0.7-1 mm, glabrous, lamina 8-15 × 1.5-2 mm; disk florets yellow, 3-4 mm, glabrous, tube ca. 1.1 mm, limb campanulate, lobes 1-1.1 mm. Achenes brown, obovoid, compressed, 2-2.5 mm, sparsely strigillose to glabrate, pale 2-4-ribbed. Pappus 3-seriate, dirty white or reddish brown, of barbellate bristles; outermost bristles slender, 0.4-0.9 mm; inner bristles ca. 3.8 mm, acute; innermost bristles 4-4.1 mm, slightly clavate. Fl. Jun-Aug, fr. Aug-Sep.

● Low mountains and alpine forests, grasslands, dry stony shrubby slopes, roadsides; 2500-3100 m. SW and W Sichuan.

The involucre and the number of ray florets of Aster taliangshanensis are distinctive.