头花杯苋 tou hua bei xian

Herbs perennial, 50-100 cm. Roots brownish gray or brownish red, stout. Stem erect, dark purple or yellowish brown, nearly quadrangular, branched, pilose. Petiole 0.5-1.5 cm, pilose; leaf blade broadly ovate or obovate-oblong, 5-14 × 3-7 cm, papery, both surfaces pilose and ciliate, base cuneate, apex caudate. Flower clusters in dichasial inflorescences, globose or ellipsoid, 2-4 cm in diam., simple or clustered in spikes; rachis 2-4.5 mm, tomentose. Bracts 3-4 mm, glabrous, apex acuminate. Flower clusters at axils of bracts, with some perfect flowers and 1 or 2 unisexual ones. Tepals of perfect flowers dark purple, lanceolate, 3-4 mm, abaxially hairy at base, apex acuminate; imperfect ones yellow, lanceolate-subulate, ca. 3 mm, rigid, apex hooked. Filaments ca. 3 mm, pilose at base; pseudostaminodes rectangular, 0.6-1 mm, parted and fimbriate at apex. Ovary hairy at base. Utricles grayish yellow, ovate-oblong, ca. 3 mm, glabrous. Seeds shiny, ellipsoid, ca. 2 mm, smooth. Fl. Aug, fr. Oct.

Hillsides; 1700-2300 m. Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan [Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sikkim, Vietnam].