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Stewart Campion
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Stewart Campion
ative Photo: Tabish
Common name: Stewart Campion
Botanical name: Silene stewartii    Family: Caryophyllaceae (Carnation family)
Synonyms: Lychnis stewartii, Silene chambaensis

Stewart Campion is a slender, grass-like herb with flowering stems slender, 15-25 cm high, hairy below, sticky-woolly above. It is named for John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Bute, 18th century British politician. Leaves are narrow, linear to lanceshaped, 2.5-5.5 x 0.15-0.2 cm, recurved along margins, spreading, keeled by a stout midnerve. Flowers are few, solitary in the upper leaf axils or in opposite pairs, nodding. Flower-stalks are velvet-hairy with 2 linear bracteoles in upper part. Calyx is oblong, 8-10 mm long, membranous, velvet-hairy; nerves green, faint, free or united or teeth rounded, scarious with long curved cilia along margins. Petals are inverted-heart-shaped, white; limb 2-partile, very short, recurved; claw very broad, eared a little longer than calyx. Styles are 3, very short. Carpophore densely woolly. Capsules longer than calyx. Stewart Campion is found in alpine Himalayas, above 2700 m, and is endemic to Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. Flowering: July-August.

Identification credit: Varun Sharma Photographed in Lahaul, Himachal Pradesh.

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