白缘蒲公英 bai yuan pu gong ying

Taraxacum licentii Soest.

Herbs 12-40 cm tall, robust. Petiole narrow; leaf blade deep green, narrowly oblanceolate, (6-)10-18 × 2-4 cm, arachnoid, margin subentire, dentate, shallowly lobed, or rarely to deeply pinnatisect; lateral lobes 3-5, broadly triangular, recurved; interlobes (when developed) with margin entire. Scapes brownish green, overtopping leaves, white arachnoid but whitish to brownish tomentose below capitulum. Capitulum 4-5 cm wide. Involucre 1-1.3 cm wide, base ± rounded. Outer phyllaries 14-19, subimbricate, ovate-lanceolate to ovate, 8-15 × (2.5-)3-4.5(-6) mm, appressed to loosely so, not distinctly veined, median part blackish green, with a whitish green to whitish 1-2 mm wide border, margin conspicuously densely whitish ciliate and blackish callose below apex (sometimes surface arachnoid in upper ca. 1/3); inner phyllaries 1.5-1.7 cm. Ligules yellow; outer ligules outside striped faintly purplish gray. Stigmas blackish to dark green. Anthers without pollen or polliniferous; pollen grains irregular in size. Achene grayish brown to light brown, (4.5-)5.5 × 1.5-2 mm; body spinulose-squamulose in upper ca. 1/3, tuberculate below, ± abruptly narrowing into a thick subcylindric 1.2-1.4 mm cone; beak ca. 9.5 mm. Pappus yellowish dirty white, 7-9 mm. Fl. summer. Agamosperm.

● Subalpine meadow slopes; 1900-3000 m. Gansu, Hebei, Shanxi.

The report of Taraxacum platypecidum for a number of additional provinces and for Korea and Japan (FRPS 80(2): 43 1999; Higher Pl. China 11: 778. 2005) is probably incorrect. However, although not yet seen by the authors among the specimens studied, the species should be looked for in the mountainous provinces adjacent to Hebei and Shanxi.