Silene wardii (C. Marquand) Bocquet

This species is unique in its group in its hairy petal limbs. The type sheet bears the field note “limb dark slaty blue, pink at margin, coronal scales crimson.”

Stems violet, ascending from ± procumbent base, 10--15(--22) cm tall, sparsely clustered, usually simple, densely glandular hairy. Basal leaves withered at anthesis; cauline leaves usually 4 or 5 pairs, sessile, elliptic, 2--3(--4.5) × 1--1.5(--2) cm, both surfaces and margin glandular hairy, apex acute. Flowers solitary, rarely 2 or 3. Pedicel 1.5--2 cm, densely glandular hairy. Calyx ovoid-campanulate, 2--2.5 × 1--1.4 cm, umbilicate below, open at apex, densely violet glandular hairy at veins; calyx teeth violet, elliptic, 5--7 mm, margin glandular ciliate, apex obtuse. Androgynophore 3--4 mm, long lanate-villous. Petals exserted 8--10 mm beyond calyx, pale violet; claws 1.7--1.8 cm; limbs glandular hairy, deeply bifid; lobes dentate or with small round teeth; coronal scales cuneate, truncate at apex, erose. Stamens ca. 1 cm; filaments woolly-hairy basally. Styles short. Capsule ovoid, 1.2--1.5 cm, 5-toothed. Seeds pale brown, orbicular-reniform, flat, ca. 2 mm, winged.

SE Xizang.

* Shifting screes, sandy gravelly deltas of glacier streams; ca. 4200 m.

Lychnis wardii Marquand, J. Linn. Soc., Bot. 48: 165. 1929; Melandrium wardii (Marquand) Pax & K. Hoffmann.