星花粉条儿菜 xing hua fen tiao er cai

Aletris stelliflora Handel-Mazzetti.

Plant glabrous throughout. Rhizome surrounded by a dense collar of persistent fibers from disintegrated leaf bases. Leaves 5 to numerous, usually laxly tufted, linear, 2--20 cm × 2--7(--9) mm. Scape 7--40 cm. Raceme 2--15 cm, not covered with viscid secretion, laxly 5--40-flowered. Flowers distinctly pedicellate; pedicel 1--10 mm; bract borne at or near base of pedicel, narrowly lanceolate, 3--9(--16) mm, shorter than flower (rarely a few bracts at base of raceme slightly longer than flower), apex obtuse to subacute; bracteole borne on proximal 1/2 of pedicel above bract. Perianth yellowish, whitish, or pinkish, 4--5 mm; tube broadly funnelform; lobes strongly recurved or revolute, narrowly oblong or oblong, 2--3 × ca. 1 mm, 1.5--2 × tube length, apex obtuse to rounded or truncate. Capsule narrowly ovoid, 4.5--7 × 2.5--3.5 mm, apex of valves abruptly narowed; style 0.5--2 mm; stigma conspicuously thickened, capitate. Fl. Jul--Sep, fr. Sep--Oct.

Alpine swamps, alpine grasslands, bamboo thickets, thicket margins, grassy cliffs, rocks; 2500--3900 m. SE Xizang, NW Yunnan [Bhutan, NE India, N Myanmar, Sikkim].

The type of Aletris gracilis corresponds with A. stelliflora not A. laxiflora as given in FRPS, so the name A. gracilis has priority over A. stelliflora which was described in 1936. Aletris gracilis is easily distinguished from A. laxiflora by its completely glabrous raceme rachis and pedicels.