Clintonia udensis

Clintonia udensis is a species of flowering plant in the lily family Liliaceae. It is the only species of Clintonia native to Asia. It prefers sparsely forested habitat including the alpine forests of the Himalayas.

Clintonia udensis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Monocots
Order: Liliales
Family: Liliaceae
Subfamily: Lilioideae
Genus: Clintonia
Species:
C. udensis
Binomial name
Clintonia udensis
Synonyms[1][2]
  • Clintonia alpina var. udensis (Trautv. & C.A.Mey.) J.F.Macbr.
  • Hylocharis cyanocarpa Tiling (for C. udensis var. udensis)
  • Smilacina alpina Royle (for C. udensis var. alpina)

Description

Clintonia udensis is a perennial herbaceous plant that spreads by means of underground rhizomes, forming colonies on the floors of temperate forests. It has 3--5 egg-shaped to elliptical leaves, each leaf 8 to 25 cm (3 to 10 in) long and 3 to 16 cm (1 to 6 in) wide. The leaf margins are pubescent when young. The pubescent stem (technically, a scape) is 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 in) long. While fruiting, the stem elongates up to 60 cm (24 in) long. The inflorescence is 3--12-flowered, in short terminal racemes with densely pubescent pedicels. The tepals are white, sometimes bluish, each tepal 7 to 12 mm (0.3 to 0.5 in) long. The berries are dark blue, almost black, up to 12 mm (0.5 in) across.[3][4]

  • Flowers (Mount Choshi, Japan, 13 June)
  • Fruiting plant with ripe fruit (Kiso Mountains, Japan, 23 September)
  • Fruit and seeds (Hida Mountains, Japan, 14 August)

Taxonomy

Clintonia udensis was first described by Ernst Rudolf von Trautvetter and Carl Anton von Meyer in 1856.[5] The specific epithet udensis, which means "from the River Uda or the Uden district of Siberia",[6] evidently refers to a region in the Russian Far East where the plant is known to occur.

As of September 2020, Plants of the World Online accepts the following infraspecific names:[2]

  • Clintonia udensis var. alpina (Kunth ex Baker) H.Hara
  • Clintonia udensis var. udensis

The word alpina means "of upland or mountainous regions".[7] Indeed, members of C. u. var. alpina are exclusively found above 3,200 m (10,499 ft) in the Himalayas.[8]

Some authorities do not accept the above infraspecific names.[9] The claim is that there are no morphological characters that consistently separate the two varieties.[10]

Distribution

Clintonia udensis is wide-ranging, from the Russian Far East to southeast Asia, extending east-west from the Kuril Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the Western Himalaya region.[2][3]

C. u. var. alpina is found in the Himalayas (from Uttarakhand to Bhutan), Assam, northern Myanmar, and western China.[8]

Bibliography
  • Trautvetter, Ernst Rudolf von; Meyer, Carl Anton von (1856). Florula Ochotensis Phaenogama. St. Petersburg: K. Akademia der Wissenschaften. Retrieved 28 September 2020.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Gledhill, David (2008). The Names of Plants (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86645-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

References
  1. "Clintonia udensis". World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP). Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  2. "Clintonia udensis Trautv. & C.A.Mey. Raf.". Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  3. Chen, Xinqi; Tamura, Minoru N. "Clintonia udensis". Flora of China. 24 – via eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA.
  4. Trautvetter & Meyer (1856), Plate 30 with caption.
  5. Trautvetter & Meyer (1856), pp. 92-93.
  6. Gledhill (2008), p. 392.
  7. Gledhill (2008), p. 43.
  8. "Clintonia udensis var. alpina". Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal – via eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA.
  9. "Clintonia udensis var. alpina (Kunth ex Baker) H.Hara". Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  10. Wagner, Richard H. (December 1973). "The East Asian Species of Clintonia Raf. (Liliaceae)". Botanical Gazette. 134 (4): 268–274. doi:10.1086/336714.
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