Thalictrum platycarpum - Broadfruit Meadow-Rue

Broadfruit Meadow-Rue is a perennial herb, 15-60 cm tall. Stems are hairless or sparsely glandular, not geniculate, smooth or indistinctly striped, simple or with 1-2 branches. Lowermost leaves wither by flowering time with their bases and part of the leaf-stalks remaining. Middle and upper stem leaves are stalkless or nearly so, 2-6 cm long, ovate, 2-3-pinnate, leaflets stalkless, 1-4 x 1-4 mm, ovate to nearly round or obovate, 3-lobed with incised-toothed lobes or deeply incised-toothed all around, leathery, hairless above, densely glandular velvet-hairy beneath, with strongly prominent nerves on lowerside. Flowers are borne in a leafy panicle, narrowly ovoid with nearly erect branches. Lower bracts are leaf-like, upper bracts very small, ternate, central leaflets often trilobate. Flower-stalks are 0.8-2 cm. Flowers are small, pendant, greenish. Sepals broadly elliptic, membranous. Filaments thread-like, anthers yellowish, shortly mucronulate, elongate. Carpels are 4-10, on short stalks, at maturity strongly compressed, 3-4 x 2.5-3 mm, obovate-triangular, glandulose, ventral suture straight, dorsal suture strongly convex, nearly rectangular. Style slightly curved, often breaking in fruit. Broadfruit Meadow-Rue is found in the Himalayas, from NE Pakistan, Kashmir eastward to Nepal, W Tibet, at altitudes of 3300-4300 m. Flowering: June-July.