雅布赖风毛菊 ya bu lai feng mao ju

Herbs 12-35 cm tall, perennial. Rootstock stout. Stems many, erect or ascending, apically few branched, base densely covered with yellowish white or yellowish brown remains of leaf petiole and rachis. Lower stem leaves 2-15 cm, irregularly pinnately parted; segments 2 or 3, distant, needlelike, 3-20 × 0.5-3 mm, both surfaces sparsely gland-dotted otherwise glabrous, base widened and semiamplexicaul, margin entire, apex acuminate or sometimes obtuse and mucronate. Middle and upper stem leaves gradually smaller upward on stem, filiform, 1.5-3 cm, undivided. Capitula 1-4, solitary or in a lax corymbiform synflorescence. Involucre obconic, obovoid, or campanulate, 5-8 mm in diam. Phyllaries yellowish green, in 7 or 8 rows, glandular hairy, apex acute to acuminate and mucronate; outer phyllaries ovate; middle phyllaries narrowly ovate; inner phyllaries linear. Receptacle bristles subulate, 2-2.5 mm. Corolla purple, 1.2-1.5 cm, gland-dotted, tube 7-8 mm, limb 5-7 mm. Achene cylindric to ovoid, 4- or 5-angled, sparsely glandular. Pappus white; outer bristles 2-3 mm; inner bristles 9-10 mm. Fl. and fr. Aug-Sep.

● Desert areas; 1300-1400 m. Nei Mongol (Alxa Meng).

No specimens of Saussurea yabulaiensis were seen by the present authors. The description here is based on the original publication and on the treatment by H. C. Fu (in Ma, Fl. Intramongol., ed. 2, 4: 749. 1993).

This species is close to and may be conspecific with Saussurea catharinae Lipschitz from Mongolia, which was described as having always undivided leaves.