紫花蒲公英 zi hua pu gong ying

Herbs 4-12 cm tall. Petiole green to pinkish, unwinged; leaf blade mid-green, ± spatulate-oblanceolate, 2.5-8 × 0.5-1.7 cm, glabrous, undivided, margin usually remotely dentate or less often with remote short triangular lobules, apex subacute. Scapes brownish green, usually overtopping leaves, glabrous. Capitulum 2-2.5 cm wide. Involucre 7-9 mm wide, base broadly rounded. Outer phyllaries 8-13, middle part deep grayish green to blackish green, ± not imbricate, ± lanceolate, often broadest in middle, outermost ones 4-5(-8) × 1.5-2.3 mm and 1/2-2/3 as long as inner ones, ± appressed, unbordered or with a gradual transition into paler to whitish 0.1-0.3 mm wide border, margin glabrous, flat below apex; inner phyllaries 1.1-1.4 cm, ± flat below apex. Ligules deep pink to light pinkish violet; outer ligules faintly striped deeper pink. Stigmas dark (probably dark green). Anthers polliniferous; pollen grains irregular in size. Achene grayish straw-colored brown, 4-4.5 × ca. 0.9 mm, smooth to very sparsely minutely tuberculate above, cone indistinct with body very gradually narrowing in beak; beak 2.5-4 mm, ± thick. Pappus white, 5-6 mm. Fl. summer. Agamosperm.

Wet alpine slopes, gravelly sites, alpine meadows; 3000-3800 m. Xinjiang (Ketmen Tau, Tian Shan) [Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan].

Plants morphologically similar to Taraxacum lilacinum but sexual have been reported (D. T. Zhang et al., Acta Bot. Boreal.-Occid. Sin. 17: 1-7. 1997), and their status remains to be studied.