Myriactis wallichii - Short-Petal Myriactis

Short-Petal Myriactis is an annual herb, 15-60 cm tall. Stems are erect, often many branched from base or middle, branches rising up, spreading, long, white bristly, sparsely villosulous, or hairless. Leaf-stalks are narrowly winged, base slightly expanded or eared-clasping, leaf surfaces sparsely white bristly, sometimes hairless, base abruptly narrowed to rounded, margin sawtoothed, wavy-toothed, or entire. Mid-stem leaves are narrowly elliptic-lanceshaped or narrowly elliptic, 4-4.6 x 2-3 cm, uppermost similar or nearly linear. Flower-heads are hemispheric, about 1 cm in diameter (in fruit), numerous in laxly corymb-like synflorescences, those of lower branches in paniculate-corymb-like or raceme-like synflorescences; flower-cluster-stalk short and slender. Phyllaries are 2-seriate, nearly equal, oblong or inverted-lanceshaped, 3-4 mm, sometimes sparsely velvet-hairy at base. Ray florets are arranged in 2- or 3-series, white becoming pink, blade linear; disk florets yellow to yellow-green, limb bell-shaped. Achenes are about 3.5 mm, shortly beaked, apically with a sticky secretion. Short-Petal Myriactis is found in grasslands, forests on slopes, in the Himalyas, at altitudes of 2600-3600 m, from Afghanistan through the Himalayas, Nepal to Bhutan, China and SE Asia. Flowering: August-October.