怒江拉拉藤 nu jiang la la teng

Herbs, perennial, weak, procumbent to ascending, from filiform rhizome, 8-50 cm tall. Stems 4-angled, glabrous or with sparse spreading hairs. Middle stem leaves in whorls of 4, sessile or subsessile; blade drying papery, dark green, narrowly ovate or elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, (3-)5-18(-23) × (1.5-)3-7(-11) mm, sparsely and at margins antrorsely hairy, base attenuate, apex slightly acute; vein 1. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, slender and slightly divaricate, cymes 1.5-6 cm, rather few flowered; axes glabrous, nearly ebracteate; pedicels (2-)4-8(-12) mm. Ovary obovoid, ca. 1 mm, appressed hairy. Corolla yellowish, ± rotate, 1-1.3 mm in diam.; lobes 4, triangular, ± obtuse. Mericarps ovoid, 1-1.5 mm, densely with short uncinate trichomes ca. 0.1 mm. Fl. and fr. Jul-Oct.

● Shady habitats, rocks in forests; 1700-2800 m. Sichuan, Yunnan (Gongshan).

The regional Galium salwinense is apparently closely related to the widespread G. bungei. Nevertheless, its habit, elongated pedicels, and fruit surface, always with short and spreading hooked trichomes, offer reliable differential characters.