Berberis pseudumbellata - Net-Veined Barberry

Net-Veined Barberry is a shrub, 2-3 m tall, deciduous, hairless; stems slender, nearly round to finely grooved, dark-red to brownish or yellowish, often verruculose. Spines are 1-1.5 cm long. Leaves are 1-3 cm long, 1-2 cm broad, oblong-obovate, narrowed below into 5-10 mm long leaf-stalk, entire to 1-5 spiny at margin, tip mostly rounded, often dull green, somewhat greyish-powdery below, venation branched to somewhat netveined. Flowers are borne in 5-10-flowered umbels, 1-5 cm long, including flower-cluster-stalk 0.5-1 cm long. Flowers are about 1 cm across, carried on flower-stalks 0.6-1 cm long, stout, sometimes thin and longer; bracts 1 mm long; prophylls 1-1.5 mm long, yellowish. Outer sepals are ovate, 2-2.8 mm long; inner sepals about 5 mm long, obovate. Petals are 5-6 mm long, 3 mm broad, somewhat clawed. Stamens are about 4 mm long, flat at the tip. Berries are about 1 cm long 6-9 mm broad, obovoid to somewhat ovoid, hard, pithy or rigid, prominently powdery blue or white. It is a very variable species of dry forest undergrowths. It differs from Berberis umbellata, a species of central Himalaya to Kumaon, by its rigid, usually obovoid-spherical berries, often entire or few spinulose leaves. Net-Veined Barberry is native to North Pakistan to Western Himalaya.