Botanical name: Pedicularis pantlingii    Family: Orobanchaceae (Broomrape family)

Pale Himalayan Lousewort is a perennial herb up 1-2 ft tall, named for Robert Pantling (1856-1910), a British botanist known for his masterly drawings and color paintings of Indian orchids. Flowers are pale purple or pink, up to about 1.7 cm; tube about 8 mm, about as long as or longer than sepal-cup, slightly expanded towards the top, galea bent at a right angle apically; beak 5-6 mm; lower lip fringed with hairs or hairless, middle lobe rounded or triangular. Two filaments are sparsely velvet-hairy, 2 hairless. Flower-stalks are 1.5-3 mm, elongating in fruit. Sepal-cup is bell-shaped, 6-8 mm, yellow velvet-hairy; sepals 5, large. Flowers are borne in racemes which are interrupted basally; bracts leaflike. Stems are often several, densely velvet-hairy apically, branched apically or unbranched; branches slender, velvet-hairy. Leaves are alternate; leaf-stalk 1-6 cm, velvet-hairy; leaf blade ovate or triangular-ovate, sometimes round, 2.5-5 x 1.5-3 cm, below white scurfy, above sparsely velvet-hairy, pinnately cut to divided; segments 3-5 pairs, ovate to triangular-ovate, toothed. Capsules are triangular-lanceshaped, 1.5-2 cm. Pale Himalayan Lousewort is found in wet boggy places, wet banks in dense mixed forests, alpine meadows, at altitudes of 3500-4200 m, in NE India, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, China. Flowering: July-August.

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The flower labeled Pale Himalayan Lousewort is ...