毛花拉拉藤 mao hua la la teng

Herbs, perennial, weak, procumbent or suberect, 10-60 cm tall. Rhizome and roots red, filiform. Stems numerous, 4-angled, with retrorse and/or spreading hairs to glabrescent. Leaves and leaflike stipules in whorls of 4; blade drying papery or membranous, linear-elliptic to narrowly lanceolate, (3-)8-17(-25) × (0.5-)1-2.5(-3.5) mm, both surfaces hirsute or only midrib and margins with straight or slightly curved hairs, base gradually and shortly attenuate, apex obtuse to subacute or shortly acuminate; vein 1. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, with several- to many-flowered cymes on peduncles longer than leaves; pedicels 1-6 mm. Flowers evidently sexually differentiated (dioecious or polygamo-dioecious?). Ovary obovoid, ca. 0.5 mm, hairy. Corolla light greenish, marked with reddish, rotate, 2-2.5 mm in diam.; lobes 4, ovate, cuspidate, sparsely hirsute toward apex. Mericarps ellipsoid, 1-1.5 mm, with dense uncinate trichomes 0.5-0.7 mm. Fl. Jul-Aug, fr. Sep-Oct.

Among shrubs and stones; 1700-3000 m or higher. Expected in Xizang [Bhutan, India, Nepal].

Galium hirtiflorum was not included in the Chinese flora by W. C. Chen but is likely to occur in Xizang. According to Ehrendorfer et al. (Fl. Iranica 176: 179. 2005) the group of G. hirtiflorum s.l. includes a series of vicarious Himalayan taxa: G. subtrinervium Ehrendorfer & Schönbeck-Temesy in Pakistan (Swat) and Kashmir, G. hirtiflorum s.s. extending eastward to Bhutan and possibly adjacent China, and finally G. glandulosum and G. forrestii reaching Yunnan and Sichuan. Their common group characters are short and retrorse stem hairs, subleathery leaves with glandlike idioblasts abaxially, strongly bracteate cymes, sexual differentiation of flowers, and fruit with uncinate trichomes.