Authors: Forrest
Leaves held erect, strap-shaped at maturity, 15-30 cm long and 2-5cm across, covered with white or cream farina when young, very pale below. Flowers fragrant, nodding, purple or creamy-white with a dark eye or a yellow eye (both colour forms), 2.5-3cm across, in one to four whorls on rather stout, farinose stems to 50cm or more high. Petal-lobes entire, rounded. Calyx bell-shaped, to 10 mm with narrow but blunt sepals cut to 2/3. Late April-May. China, widespread in north-west Yunnan and western Sichuan, south-east Tibet in alpine meadows at about 4000m. An extreme variable plant. Narrow-leaved forms from more alpine areas at high altitude are ssp. sinoplantaginea, robust purple-flowered forms ssp. sinopurpurea. Probably, tiny forms originally P. diantha are extreme ecotypes of this species too.The localised (in the wild) ssp. chionantha is white-flowered. The handsome P. sinonivalis from extreme western Yunnan is probably best treated as a distinctive subspecies of P. chionantha too, but P. melanops is now considered distinct. The easiest Crystallophlomis species, often permanent in a cool, moisture retentive well-drained site, particularly if cloched in winter.
