Caltha scaposa (Caltha scaposa)
Description
Caltha scaposa is a low, perennial herb with one or two yellow hermaphrodite saucer-shaped flowers. This marsh-marigold species belongs to the buttercup family, grows in moist alpine fields and is native to the eastern Himalayas and the mountains on the eastern margin of the Tibetan highland.Caltha scaposa has flowers on stems that grow on after flowering from 7 to 24 cm high, with a thick rootstock that branches into many main roots. Its leaves are in a rosette and consist of a leafstalk and a leafblade. The leafstalk is up to 10 cm long, and has a narrow, membranous and about 2½ cm long sheath at the base. The leafblade is long hart-shaped or sometimes kidney-shaped (1½-3½ x 1–3 cm), with a blunt tip and an entire, scalloped or tooth-bearing margin. Mostly there are several flowering stems in each plant, which sometimes carry one, small, leaflike stipule and usually one, rarely 2 flowers of about 2½ cm across. As all marsh-marigolds, it lacks petals, but the five to nine (most often six) sepals are petal-like, strikingly yellow, inverted egg-shaped with a blunt tip, 10-15 x 6–8 mm. There are between twenty and forty stamens with flattened yellow filaments that carry yellow pollen, and encircle between ten and twenty carpels which are linear-oblong and prolonged into the persistent style, topped by an oblique and curved stigma. After pollination, the carpels develop into follicles of about 10x3 mm on 1½-3 mm long stalks. They may contain three to six ovoid, black seeds. Flowering occurs between June and August.
Taxonomic tree
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Domain: Eukarya
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Kingdom: Plantae
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Phylum:
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Class: Magnoliopsida
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Order: Ranunculales
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Family: Ranunculaceae
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Genus: Caltha
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