Rosaceae week : Potentilla eriocarpa Spiti: Rosaceae week : Potentilla eriocarpa This plant was observed in Spiti Himalaya. I had posted it earlier and was IDed as Potentilla eriocarpa. Yes it tallies with P. eriocarpa, especially the close ups Sorry this looks absolutely nothing like P.eriocarpa - which is a cliff-dwelling species. The foliage is not silky-hairy. Can you say the altitude it was photographed? There are a number of Potentillas which are difficult to tell apart. I draw your attention to the other two posts, correctly identified as P.eriocarpa incl. As you will see, these specimens are VERY different to the plants you photographed and were in the typical habitat. P.eriocarpa is found on wet cliffs part of the way up the Rohtang. I have some images from there which I plan to post. Please check with Potentilla argyrophylla...? Not sure but may be P. argyrophylla. I agree that it has similarities to what was Potentilla argyrophylla but I suspect it MIGHT be another taxon. As things stand best just to have it as Potentilla sp. Potentilla is a more complicated genus that appreciated. There are e.g. 33 species of Potentilla recorded by Dickore & Klimes (2005) from Ladakh not to mention 7 sub-specific taxa and a hybrid. MORE than a dozen of which I had not heard of before! They listed BOTH P.atrosanguinea and P.argyrophylla. My own informal check-list of Ladakh flora begun in the 1980s only had 14 species!! It is clear that I need to spend some time familiarising myself with these additional species BEFORE I can MEANINGFULLY examine the images from Spiti - it is likely that a number of these unfamiliar species from Ladakh may well occur in Spiti as well. There is also the distinct possibility that other species have been recognised/recorded from Spiti in the past 10-20 years, which were not known previously. So one MUST NOT only consider species known/recognised IN THE PAST. Thus, until we have a specialist in Potentilla or at least someone who has scrutinised ALL known species from this region that a sound identification of the plant mistakenly thought to be P.eriocarpa, can RELIABLY arrived at. It is always much easier to say what a plant is not, than be confident as to what it is. In the mean-time, members should know a little about Potentilla argyrophylla Wall. ex Lehm. Stewart recorded this particularly var. lecochroa usually as a size smaller and more common at higher altitudes incl. Ladakh and Kashmir to 4500m. He also recognised P.atrosanguinea Lodd. - not very common in Kashmir. He separated var. cataclines - which he recorded from parts of Ladakh @ 3000-3900m. He thought this taxon was analogous to P. argyrophylla var. lecochroa but the flowers were carmine or reddish, not as dark as P.atrosanguinea -he felt may be a hybrid. Whereas Flowers of the Himalaya relegated P.argyrophylla to a synonym of P.atrosanguinea - which followed the assessment of Potentilla by H. Ohashi in 'Enumeration of the Flowering Plants of Nepal' (which referred to J.Sokak's Taxonomy of Phytogeography of Potentilla in 1970. I have seen what I understand to be P.atrosanguinea in H.P. incl. on the Rohtang. I have seen what I understood to be P. argyrophylla in Ladakh. I consider them to be distinct taxa but leave it to full-time taxonomists to decide a what level -species, subspecies, varieties.... As for Flora of Lahaul-Spiti -this lists MANY fewer species of Potentilla. The authors (unfortunately there is a misspelling here P.atrisanguinea) record P.atrosanguinea var. atrosanguinea as common in alpine meadows & glacial moraines at Maran Pass, Spiti; P.atrosanguinea var. argyrophylla as common in alpine meadows and glacial moraines at Khoksar - I suspect they may have misidentified this, mistaking what was a different species. They distinguish on the basis of red-purple flowers cf. yellow flowers. What about specimens with orange flowers? It would be no surprise to find there are actually 10 (or a larger number) MORE species of Potentilla in Lahaul-Spiti than this Flora records.... |
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