大胞拉拉藤 da bao la la teng

Herbs, perennial, weak to procumbent. Stems 6-40 cm, sharply 4-angled, glabrous, smooth, rough or sparsely retrorsely aculeolate; internodes 6.5-33 mm; nodes ± hairy. Middle stem leaves in whorls of up to 6, sessile; blade drying papery, often blackening, linear-oblanceolate to narrowly elliptic, 2-12.5 × 0.4-2 mm, glabrous, smooth or sparsely retrorsely aculeolate on midrib abaxially, adaxially with relatively large epidermal cells (use 20× lens), base acute, margins flat to thinly revolute, apex acute then contracted and mucronate; vein 1. Inflorescences axillary, with 1- or occasionally 3-flowered cymes; pedicels 0.2-1.5 mm, glabrous, smooth. Ovary ellipsoid-obovoid, ca. 0.5 mm, glabrous, smooth. Corolla white or pale green (perhaps sometimes drying pink), rotate, 1.5-2.7 mm in diam.; lobes 4, lanceolate-spatulate, glabrous beneath, puberulent above, with shortly acuminate apex, clearly longer than stamens. Mericarps ellipsoid, 0.7-1.1 × 1-1.5 mm, glabrous, granular-verruculose, with pedicels often elongating to 3.5 mm. Fl. and fr. Jul-Sep.

Open places, forests; 1800-3100 m. ?Sichuan, Xizang [Bhutan, India, Nepal].

Galium megacyttarion (type from Uttar Pradesh, Raizada 7326, E) belongs to the high elevation Himalayan subgroup (2) of the G. asperifolium group, which includes G. acutum (see additional comments under these species). The protologue of G. megacyttarion describes the flowers as having stamens shorter than the corolla; comparable information is not yet available for the majority of the Chinese Galium species. We have seen no material cited in the original description nor plants which undoubtedly belong here. Nevertheless, one very condensed provenance (Duthie 7492, from Bhutan, the Black Mountain Expedition 1888, WU) exhibits the large leaf epidermal cells described for G. megacyttarion; but it deviates by having antrorse microhairs on the adaxial leaf side and glabrous leaf margins, finely rough stems, many-flowered cymes, and glabrous petals. It was determined by Cufodontis (Oesterr. Bot. Z. 89: 241-243. 1940) erroneously as G. asperifolium var. sikkimense. Another plant with large epidermal cells has been seen from Sichuan (W. C. Chen, 23 Jun 1988, PE), but this corresponds in all other characters to G. pusillosetosum.