芮芭拉拉藤 rui ba la la teng

?Galium bodinieri H. Léveillé.

Herbs, perennial, procumbent and mat-forming. Stems (5-)14-30(-45) cm, 4-angled or -sulcate, branched, glabrous and smooth, but sometimes with scattered straight hairs. Leaves in whorls of up to 6, sessile; blade drying papery, blackish, linear-lanceolate to narrowly oblanceolate, 2.5-10.5 × 0.4-1.4 mm, with inconspicuous epidermal cells, glabrous and smooth, rarely with a few straight hairs on abaxial midvein, base cuneate, margins entire and smooth, flat to thinly revolute, apex acute, contracted and shortly mucronate; vein 1. Inflorescences with predominantly axillary cymes, 1-6-flowered; axes glabrous, smooth; pedicels 0.1-3.2 mm. Ovary ellipsoid-obovoid, ca. 0.5 mm, glabrous, smooth. Corolla red, purple, or occasionally white, rotate, 1.7-3.6 mm in diam., glabrous to papillose; lobes 4, lanceolate-spatulate, adaxially glabrous except puberulent on margins and central vein, apex acute to shortly acuminate. Mericarps ellipsoid, ca. 1.5 × 0.7 mm, glabrous and smooth or granular-verruculose, on pedicels often elongating to 5 mm. Fl. and fr. Jun-Nov.

Damp banks under evergreen forests, alpine meadows, on rocks; 2000-4000 m. Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan [Bhutan, India (Sikkim), Nepal].

Galium rebae belongs to the Himalayan and SW Chinese complex of (sub)alpine taxa from the G. asperifolium group studied by Mill (Edinburgh J. Bot. 53: 193-213. 1996; Fl. Bhutan 2(2): 825-834. 1999). It is closely related to G. acutum and often only separable by its flower color (see comments under that species). At the same time, it appears linked to the likewise reddish flowering but larger G. blinii at lower elevations. Reddish flowers also occur in G. pusillosetosum, which differs by its dense stem, leaf, and fruit indumentum.