Neobrachyactis anomala - Himalayan Bracted-Fleabane

Himalayan Bracted-Fleabane is a perennial herb, 60-95 cm tall, with sweet menthol odor. Bracted-Fleabanes are plants with flowers which look like Fleabane but one or two bracts just below the flower-heads are enlarged and look like leaves. Flower-heads are daisy-like, solitary or 3 or 4 crowded at ends of stems or branches, 1-1.5 cm in diameter, flower-cluster-stalks 5-10 mm. Involucre is hemispheric-bell-shaped; bracts are membranous, outer often 1 or 2 leaflike, green along midvein, inner linear or linear-lanceshaped, 6-7 mm. Florets are fertile. Ray florets are numerous, arranged in 2 series, 5-6 mm, blade bluish, longer than style, narrow, tip 3-toothed; disk florets about 5 mm, tube and limb base often hairy, limb funnel-shaped, lobes lanceshaped, hairless. Stems are erect, rigid, tinged pinkish violet, shortly branched, glandular. Leaves are crowded, surfaces densely stipitate glandular, basal and lower stem leaves long stalked, obovate or oblong-lanceshaped, 1.5-5 x 0.5-1.5 cm, margin sawtoothed, tip pointed or arcuate; upper stalkless, gradually reduced, base somewhat stem-clasping, decurrent, rounded. Achenes are brown, inverted-lanceshaped, compressed, 3-3.5 mm, sparsely bristly. Himalayan Bracted-Fleabane is found in alpine thicket margins, grasslands on slopes, at altitudes of 3300-4000 m, in the Himalayas, from Kashmir to Sikkim, S. Tibet. Flowering: May-September.