FoI
Tibetan Tansy
Share Foto info
Tibetan Tansy
ative Photo: Suresh Rana
Common name: Tibetan Tansy
Botanical name: Ajania tibetica    Family: Asteraceae (Sunflower family)
Synonyms: Chrysanthemum tibeticum, Tanacetum tibeticum

Tibetan Tansy is a densely greyish velvet-hairy perennial herb with several stems arising from the rootstock. Stems are upwardly profusely leafy, up to 10-12 cm tall, erect or ascending stems. Leaves have narrowly winged long stalks with dense velvety hairs. Leaves are elliptic to broadly inverted-lanceshaped, 1-1.5 cm long, 0.8-1 cm wide, twice palmately cut into linear-oblong or narrowly elliptic ultimate segments, beset with gray velvety hairs. Flower-heads are yellow, nearly spherical, 8-10 mm across, on 1.0-1.5 cm long stalks, in simple or compound corymbs at end of stems. The cup of the flower-head is bell-shaped, 6-8 mm in diameter, phyllaries broadly light brownish scarious-margined, outer oblong-lanceolate to narrowly deltoid-ovate, about 3 mm long, median and inner ones elliptic to obovate or suborbiculate, 4.5-6 mm long, obtuse. Marginal florets are female, in single rank, fertile, with slender, narrow, 2-4-toothed, c. 2.5 mm long corolla tube. Disc-florets are numerous, bisexual, with cylindrical, 2.5 -3 mm long, 5-toothed corolla tube. Cypselas homomorphic, obconic, 1.8-2.2 mm long, light brown. Tibetan Tansy is found in the Himalayas, from Pakistan, Kashmir, Ladakh, Tibet and Kazakhstan, at altitudes of 3900-4700 m. Flowering: July-September.

Identification credit: Suresh Rana
Photographed in Paddar Valley, Jammu & Kashmir.
• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,