Wild flowers at Baltoro Glacier

Chris Chadwell - May 2, 2018 9:33 am - Hasn't voted

IF I am correct, Stewart, in his ‘An Annotated Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of Pakistan & Kashmir’ knew this as Potentilla fruticosa var. fruticosa recorded from the Karakoram Mountains; he recognised a var. parviflora from Chitral, Gilgit & Ladakh plus var. pumila from Chitral-Gilgit, Baltistan & Ladakh @ 3900-4950m. The taxonomy and nomenclature of these Potentillas has been revised since Stewart (1972). The final variety is now Dasiphora dryadanthoides, which is a prostrate mat-former. I don't know what has happened to the var. ochreata.

I have seen what I take to be Dasiphora arbuscula on the wet, Kulu Valley side of the Rohtang Pass, Himachal Pradesh, whilst Dasiphora dryadanthoides grows on the lower slopes of the Baralacha La (in Lahaul) en route to Ladakh. The journey can now be undertaken readily by vehicle, rather than the days on foot which Dr Walter Koelz, an American took in the early 1930s, with pack animals - but care needs to be taken with the rapid ascent to the pass at 4800m; I was OK a colleague in his 60s and then with my four-year-old son but the following year, my colleague camped on the pass (one normally descends either to Sarchu plain if travelling to Ladakh or much lower into Lahaul if coming from Ladakh) with someone in their late twenties, slim, fit, who had trekked in Nepal to a similar height without any problems but was in a bad way that night, coughing blood, his lips blue; rapid descent following morning and he was fine within a week. Those long walk-ins to Himalayan base-camps 50+ years ago, had their uses!