FoI
Geranium Rock Jasmine
Share Foto info
Geranium Rock Jasmine
P Native Photo: Siddarth Machado
Common name: Geranium Rock Jasmine
Botanical name: Androsace geraniifolia    Family: Primulaceae (Primrose family)
Synonyms: Androsace flaccida

Geranium Rock Jasmine is a perennial herb with runners thread-like, 10-30 cm, soft, velvet-hairy. Leaves form a rosette; leaf-stalk 3-15 cm, hairy. Leaves are nearly round to kidney-shaped, 2.5-5 cm wide, strigose, base heart-shaped, palmately 5-7-lobed to middle; lobes wedge-shaped-obovate, 3--5-lobulate. They look like Geranium leaves. Flowering stems are 2 to many, arising from leaf rosettes, usually about twice as long as leaves; umbels 6-14-flowered; bracts lanceshaped, 2.5-5 mm. Flower-stalks are 5-10 mm, finely velvet-hairy. Calyx is velvet-hairy, 3--3.5 mm, parted to middle; sepals ovate-lanceshaped, tip blunt. Flower are white or pink with a yellow eye, about 7 mm in diameter. Petals are obovate-oblong, tip rounded. Geranium Rock Jasmine is found in Fir forests and grassy mountain slopes, at altitudes of 2700-3000 m, from Kumaon to Bhutan, Sikkim. Flowering: May-June.

Identification credit: Siddarth Machado Photographed in Lachen, North Sikkim.

• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,